tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post7268146534389961356..comments2024-03-05T06:16:30.628-06:00Comments on Mary and Mariology: Church-Sanctioned Apparitions in 19th-Century FranceServant of Maryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-1013161034258430452021-07-29T03:14:03.260-05:002021-07-29T03:14:03.260-05:00I really love the way you discuss this kind of top...I really love the way you discuss this kind of topic.~..:- <a href="https://formary.org/" rel="nofollow">for mary</a>Lucashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16957284277484551382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-43784521698499348762015-12-03T13:56:50.712-06:002015-12-03T13:56:50.712-06:00As HPB mentions, a bigger emphasis on the importan...As HPB mentions, a bigger emphasis on the importance of the factual evidence had just taken place through the Enlightenment and had been continued with the rise of the sciences and the Industrial Revolution. This could explain the validation process of the church. The scientific process had been introduced as a useful way of proving theories, so to be able to prove these vision are correct, the church used the conventional method at the time. Ergo, rigorous and repeated tests had to take place for the church to publicly announce the legitimization of these occurrences. But this cannot fully explain it, because the church is also showing their work. Instead of saying, “we put these children through many tests with these circumstances, etc”, they’re making a point of outlining the entire process. So then we have to wonder why the church would want to make sure their methods appeared so valid. <br /><br />I would posit that this effort was a result of not who the seers were, but on who was watching these events unfold. The 19th century was the start of the rise of popular media. These apparitions would’ve been more accessible to and judged by people around the world and the church probably took notice of that. They had to check and double-check every single word of these visions. The effect is one of seemingly increased skepticism. The rigorous processes utilized are a result of new methods in humans’ abilities to prove theories and things. The express utilization of these processes alone, with increased explanations of why the church is right was the result of the church now being more exposed to the public’s eye. No longer could faith alone buy legitimacy*. <br /><br />*This might be why we see such a drastic change in seer demographics. Once the ethos previously granted to the faithful’s visions disappeared, the church “allowed” others to be visionaries. Regarding my point in the article about the scientific method, I would argue that had their been other demographics represented in the apparition stories of this time period, the church would have utilized the same process. <br /><br />-HGServant of Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-65740089914902646722015-12-02T12:26:43.021-06:002015-12-02T12:26:43.021-06:00I definitely think it is interesting to examine wh...I definitely think it is interesting to examine why the Church was so extensive in ensuring the validity of visions in the 19th century. The idea that greater skepticism was characteristic of the “modern era” is certainly valid, but I wonder if there is also something in the way the Church and Christianity itself had evolved to a more predominant and secure place with European society. At the beginning of the spread of Christianity throughout Europe, the Church faced numerous difficulties with the conversion process from Paganism to Christianity. We’ve seen in a few of our readings the idea that the power and majesty bestowed upon Mary in more medieval literature comes out of a desire to make her like a pagan goddess. There is a multitude of miracle accounts – like those from Rocamadour – that, in the extent of agency they give Mary, suggest a desire from the laity to have a goddess-like figure. The fact that all of these miracles are recorded within a church setting also shows less skepticism on the part of the Church than seen later in the 19th century, as well as suggests that there was some understanding among Church officials that in order to have a successful whole conversion and devout laity, there possibly needed to be some leniency in allowing people to look to Mary as a sort of goddess. Thus, when this Church position changes to skepticism in the 19th century, I wonder if it also comes out of change in the overall makeup of the Christian people, where Mary is no longer needed as goddess necessarily in order for the people to fully be faithful; thus allowing the Church to be more skeptical in questioning Marian visions. <br /><br />-SMServant of Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-84638197416603067662015-11-28T11:14:05.870-06:002015-11-28T11:14:05.870-06:00Building off your post, and the comments about the...Building off your post, and the comments about the changes between earlier depictions of Mary, and more modern apparitions, the shift in the visionaries from the highly learned to the simple also seems to parallel a shift in giving Mary a more authoritative image. I do not mean that Mary was not an authority before, she was venerated and women and men tried to follow her examples of piety and humbleness. However as an apparition, Mary is much more physically present, and in a commanding way in these readings. Monks asked Mary for help in being like her, but here Mary is coming down and making things happen. SL’s comments however give me pause though, and maybe this was just shift in focus. The reality of apparitions, and the power of God were very much alive for earlier generations. An example that comes to my mind is Luther in the thunderstorm story where Luther appeals to St. Anne to save him, and she does. <br /><br />The shift away from the learned visionaries to the simple faith is somewhat puzzling. In a time of the growing importance of science, reasoning through facts based off of experience, it seems surprising that the Church moved away from the more academic veneration that drew a great deal from Church teachings. Maybe this was connected with romanticism, and reaction to rationalization of most everything, and an appeal to a broader section of society by putting the simple in the middle of an active faith. SL’s comments argue away from this being a romantic shift, the Church’s increasing standards of proof certainly point against it. <br /><br />I think it would be interesting to discuss more in class about the Church’s image in the press, and the role of the press in religion. <br /><br />HPB<br />Servant of Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-42891537375816716062015-11-24T13:07:21.922-06:002015-11-24T13:07:21.922-06:00I think you raise some interesting questions on ho...I think you raise some interesting questions on how the Church’s response to Marian apparitions has changed over time, but I’d like to note that actually, Marian apparitions are all over the place prior to this period! We saw dozens of accounts of sightings of the Virgin in the Golden Legend, the accounts at Rocamadour, the Cantigas, etc, all of which were highly localized instances of Mary offering aid, requesting something, interceding on her follower’s behalf – in short, doing precisely the kinds of things we see in “modern” apparitions like those at Lourdes and La Salette. The difference is that in almost none of those early legends do we see a process of inquisition and verification at the level we have documented for the “sanctioned” Marian shrines. <br /><br />At La Salette, we saw verifications of Mary’s presence through the alleged Christ-imprinted rock fragment from her seat; we saw the spring of healing that became a source of pilgrimage for tens of thousands, even today, we saw the seers undergo years of questioning, allowing their visions to become fleshed-out and developed over time. <br /><br />But we never saw any of this rigor in the miracle stories of the Virgin, no attempts to find precisely the church, or the river, or the field where she appeared. Even at the time of the Reformation, we saw a wide proliferation of Marian icons and statues that marked sites such as where Mary healed a worker’s eye – where was the inquisition then? <br /><br />I think that one of the reasons why the Church’s standards of proof may have changed is because it became easier for any member of the Church to visit and venerate an alleged site of devotion for him/herself. Before, if a traveler was waylaid by bandits and saved by Mary on the road, it was a story to pass around among monks and priests as parables of faith. Now, if that happened, people from miles around would flock to that road, hoping for some sign that Mary had been there. Thus it became exceedingly important to ensure that visions of Mary aligned with Church-espoused beliefs, that such sites were within the Church’s sphere of control. And through this process of inquisition, the interaction between the Church and the masses produces the character of the shrine that we still have today. Just look at what happened to Melanie and Maximin after their revealing of the “Secrets” to the Pope, in which they revealed distressing “prophecies” given to them by Mary years ago – the Church split with them! No one really paid attention to these belayed declarations. Instead, we visit La Salette to see the Christly rocks and take a sample of the spring water. <br /><br />-SL<br />Servant of Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-43147545824560951362015-11-23T09:03:55.931-06:002015-11-23T09:03:55.931-06:00Building on what Prof. Fulton Brown has said, I th...Building on what Prof. Fulton Brown has said, I think there are (at least) two things worth highlighting that suggest major differences between these modern apparitions and pre-modern visions. The first is the idea that the visionary is more credible because they are less educated in spiritual matters. This seems completely contrary to the medieval understanding which suggested that the visionary ought to be highly learned, highly trained, and someone actively involved in the religious life in order to be taken seriously. There seems to have been a loss of respect for what we might called "learned holiness" in favor of "simple faith." <br /><br />On a related note, there is also the content of the visions themselves. Besides the fact that the apparitions which they witness are of a very different form than, say, Hildegaard's visions, the modern visionaries also have this lack of recognition which you point to, while Elizabeth, Hildegaard, and others are able to offer sustained exegetical reflections based on what they've seen, and their visions are exceedingly complicated. Is there a difference not just in detail but in what visions fundamentally are that we're witnessing here? Or are there important similarities that these distinctions mask?dyingsthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02087241514388178221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-57068289437389760112015-11-22T21:13:44.953-06:002015-11-22T21:13:44.953-06:00For the whole quarter it seems like we have been t...For the whole quarter it seems like we have been trying to reconcile modern understanding of Mary with the origins of her cult in the earliest origins of Christianity, and I think the way LS contextualizes these Marian visions in paragraph 3 hits the nail on the head. The earliest specifically Christian writings we read (I'm thinking mainly of the Apocryphal stories concerning Mary's life, Proclus' speeches, and Germanos I and Andrew of Crete, particularly) all based their claims on a synthetic reading of preexisting material - namely, the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, along with the widespread wisdom imagery of e.g. the Song of Songs. <br /><br />All these authors come from a time (and place, and social milieu) so far removed from that of these 19th century visionaries, yet although the end products differ, both groups are essentially doing the same thing. In both cases the visions serve to legitimize what the viewers see: in late antiquity, or even as late as St. Gertrude, this was based on the panoply of learned references with which the authors justified their claims, but by the time of La Salette and Lourdes (or even before, as we saw in the visions from Spain) the metric for a vision's authenticity has changed to the ignorance of the viewer. If a learned individual sees an ornate vision of Mary, whose attributes can be supported by numerous scriptural or patristic references, by the understanding of the 19th century it's simply subconscious suggestion, but if an unlearned tabula rasa like an illiterate, grudgingly-pious shepherd child sees the same vision, that's proof of the innate truth of what is seen. This seems to be in tune with what little I know of the 19th century's approach to knowledge - but to me this seems to speak more to Mary's intrinsic place in Christianity regardless of time period.<br /><br />F. S.<br />Servant of Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-6092452972612871352015-11-22T17:46:01.693-06:002015-11-22T17:46:01.693-06:00It is true that the reports on these apparitions a...It is true that the reports on these apparitions are more complicated than the ones that we have looked at earlier, but we still need to develop some criteria for talking about them. The question is whether skepticism as such is a sufficient explanation for the way in which the clergy at the time responded. Certainly, the other adults whom the children told about their visions could be equally skeptical (particularly their mothers!) without necessarily having any more education than the children. One could even argue that the better educated clergy seem to have been more likely to believe the children than their own families. We need to put these stories in context with the other accounts that we have read fully to appreciate why they took the form that they did in the 19th century. It is not so much that the 19th century European Christians were more skeptical than their pre-modern ancestors; rather, their skepticism took a different form, required different kinds of proof. We need to figure out some way of thinking about why. RLFBServant of Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.com