Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural Read Free

a bold steeplechase through history down to the present day I am going to present the reader with documented cases of visions. Not until the vast terrain has been cleared of undergrowth will it be possible to show what conclusions can be drawn, and what explanations can be offered or are theoretically conceivable.

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Every year on 16th August in Iborra, Spain, the faithful pray to a blood-soaked cloth. This relic (*) has been the object of religious veneration since the year 1010.
    At that time the Right Reverend Bernard Olivier is supposed to have been assailed by doubts when during the mass the tintinnabulum (bell used in the mass) rang to transform the red wine into Christ's blood. From that moment, so the story goes, the blood mysteriously increased in volume, and it seemed to the faithful as if it flowed from the cloth of the Lord over the altar steps down to the floor of the chapel. Imagination went so far that some determined women mopped up the blood from the floor with cloths, the annals record. The Bishop of Solsona, St. Ermengol, heard of the happening and told the Pope. Pope Sergius IV (1009-1012) allowed public veneration of the strange relic, the bloodstained cloth of Iborra.
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    [*] A relic may be the remains of a saint or a saint's possessions, also one of the instruments of martyrdom.
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    It is not always holy figures that provoke visions, their trappings can do it, too. Iborra is not an exceptional case.

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The pious Monsieur Thierry, Rector of Paris University, was murdered in Pirlemont, Brabant, in 1073.
    The brutal murderers threw his corpse into a muddy pond. For a long time the inhabitants vainly searched all over the village for the victim, when suddenly a 'wonderful light', which radiated from the I body, shone from the pond. In gratitude for this miraculous discovery an artist painted a wooden panel of the Blessed Virgin floating over the water. In 1297 the picture was transferred to a recently built chapel. During the consecration ceremonies, so it says in the records, the picture was suddenly enveloped in an 'inexplicable blaze of light'. (3) Even though it was not officially recorded, I suspect that here too the Blessed Virgin- tirelessly active everywhere, performed some other strange feats.
    Perhaps she smiled at the congregation; perhaps she waved her hand in blessing from the frame.

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On 23rd February, 1239, a small army of Christian warriors fought against a vastly superior force of Mohammedans on the hill of Codol, three miles from Jativa, near Valencia, Spain.
    Before the battle six of the Christian leaders were praying before taking Holy Communion. They had just had time to confess their sins, but not to receive the host, because at that very moment the enemy's battle-cry reached the church from nearby Mount Chio. The leaders grabbed their weapons, since prayer would no longer serve. Terrified that the Moslems might destroy the church, the priests hid the altar cloth and host under a pile of stones. The Christian knights were victorious. When the priests took the altar cloth from its hiding place, six bloody hosts were stuck to it. But there was more to come!
    The next day the Moslems attacked with heavy reinforcements. The situation seemed hopeless and the Christians had to withdraw to the Castle of Chio, which they had captured the day before. The priests had a brilliant idea. They tied the altar cloth, made sacred by the apparition of the hosts, to a pole and waved it at the enemy from the battlements of the castle. Tradition relates that the altar cloth sent out rays of light far and wide and that they were so luminous that the enemy were blinded and fled.
    Is that a proof of the primitive power of vision? They can sway whole armies and even the battle cry
    'Great is Allah!' is no help against the blood of Christ. No, visions are not always peaceful. If necessary, they can also spread fear and panic.
    Any visitor to Spain can see that altar cloth with six red spots in