The front page of the 2021 Christmas edition of the German paper Die Zeit carried the headline: “Wunder: wer glaubt denn so was?” (“Miracles: Who would believe that?”).1 It announced an article in Zeit Magazin by Johanna Haberer and Sabine Rückert, who presented seven modern miracle narratives to celebrate the time of the year. They ranged from a lost wedding ring found in the mud-filled streets of an Ahr Valley village, which had been hit by catastrophic flooding that summer, to the rescue of a Berlin child who had gotten lost during a summer hike in the Upper Palatine Forest, to a desperate student finding an apartment in Hamburg at the very last moment.2 Anindya Anugrah’s fantastic and fairy-tale-like illustrations – in slightly psychedelic, blooming colours – gave the stories an overall atmosphere of the marvellous. As the headline’s rhetorical question suggested, most would not attribute the happy endings of these events to the intervention of a supernatural power. But Haberer and Rückert choose to explicitly reproduce the events as miracles to demonstrate that – and here they quote the quantum physicist Niels Bohr – “whoever does not believe in miracles, is not a realist”.3 With the article’s title and Bohr’s quote, Haberer and Rückert demonstrate in a nutshell that writing about miracles, that is, medialising them, is always a balancing act between incredibility and veracity: for events to be perceived as miraculous, they have to be seen as both incredible and real. To think or speak about an event as a miracle is to medialise it as such. Miracles and media are, thus, inherently connected.
Even when the natural order “seemed to be fundamentally breakable” in the premodern period and miracles were accepted as a part of daily life,4 early modern humans faced the same problem when medialising miracles – as the contributions to this volume show. They had to present them in such a way so as to evoke both astonishment and truth. It is notable, then, that striking parallels exist between the medial characteristics of that 2021 issue of Zeit Magazin and the early modern reproduction of miracles. The article narrates the events in multiple short texts – not much longer than one page per event. They thus function like the textual genre of the exemplum. Their brevity recalls the typical narrative style of collections of prodigious stories as published throughout early modern European literary history, from Conrad Lycosthenes’s Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon (1557) to Pierre Boaistuau and François de Belleforest’s Histoires prodigieuses, collected from 1561 onwards and popular well into the seventeenth century, or Simon Goulart’s Histoires admirables et mémorables de nostre temps (1600–1610).5 In these volumes, miracle stories are collected and narrated as remarkable but true events that occurred at certain times and places. They often include images depicting the events, too. Haberer and Brückert’s seeming imitation of the specific media constellation of an early modern collection of prodigious tales, including the narrative brevity and marvellous imagery, demonstrates that for events to become miracles they must be perceived and therefore medialised as such. By reproducing these stories in this specific media constellation, Haberer and Rückert – whether intentionally or not – walk in the footsteps of early modern authors like Boaistuau, Belleforest and others, particularly notable in their presentation of that year’s news as “véritables histoires” (true stories) – a word pair intrinsically connected to the genre of the prodigious tale.6 Their provocatively formulated conclusion – that it is realistic to believe in miracles – already proves that reproducing miracles is not self-evident. Whenever there is talk of miracles, doubt and scepticism need to be addressed. At the same time, whenever humans experience an event as a miracle, there is an urge to record and medialise it.
This question of reproducing miracles in media, that is, of representing events that escape human comprehension and that are signs of a divine presence, is at the centre of the present volume. Its chapters deal with representations of miracles in the arts and literature of the early modern period, during which the awareness of and the sensibility for the miraculous reached a high point. In this introductory chapter, I address the inherent connection between miracles and media by looking at the medialisation of one of the most fundamental miracles of Christianity: the miracle of transubstantiation. By first looking at how this miracle is medialised through the modern medium of the electronic screen and, secondly, at how it was discussed in two fundamental works of theology of the early modern period, I aim to show that reproducing miracles – which in Mario Grizelj’s words “insist on a semiotic and medial actualization”7 – means dealing with their need to transcend media at the same time.
1. Televised Transubstantiation: Miracles on the Screen
The COVID-19 pandemic acutely reminded believers of the inherent connection between miracles and media. As Catholic priests were forced to switch to televised Mass celebrations, they were quickly confronted with the question of the Real Presence. Could the miracle of transubstantiation, which is fundamental to the sacrament of the Eucharist, be experienced through a screen? By looking at publications on the issue authored by active clergymen, one can observe an almost intuitive awareness of the fundamental connection between miracles and media. In an article entitled “We Should Stop Filming the Liturgy of the Eucharist”, the Jesuit Anthony R. Lusvardi, for example, gives a clear answer to the question. Citing media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s thesis that “the medium is the message”,8 Lusvardi concludes:
When the medium is bread and wine, it can’t go digital without becoming something less than bread and wine. Pictures of food and drink do not nourish. And love means remaining unsatiated with anything less than the Beloved – even when he is absent. […] Perhaps our way of worshipping needs to testify more clearly to the fact that certain things cannot go virtual. The Real Presence seems a good place to start.9
According to Lusvardi, then, the miracle of transubstantiation cannot be medialised through the electronic screen. For the miracle to fulfil its purpose in the Communion, the faithful must be physically present to experience it, because wine and bread are media that depend on their materiality. Other voices are slightly more positive about the possibilities of modern media technologies. Felix Just, also a Jesuit, argues that media are always implicated in celebrating Mass and
that the quality of “virtual participation” in a well-prepared liturgy is just as good (or even better) as attending a huge outdoor Papal Mass, when jumbotrons are needed to electronically mediate the presence of the presider to those who are physically very distant in the far-flung crowd.10
By referring to the central assumption of transubstantiation that Christ can miraculously be present in two places at the same time, he concludes that media do not necessarily function as a barrier between believers and Christ’s Real Presence during Mass:
Just as Jesus is not bound by the limits of space and time (“Where two or three are gathered, there I am …”), so we should not rigidly insist on requirements of “physical presence” when “virtual reality” makes it possible to be “really present”, although in a different way than we have been used to before now.11
The subject is discussed in scholarly literature as well. Theologian Vivencio O. Ballano, for example, continues Just’s line of argumentation. Taking up a “sociological and holistic perspective”,12 his article pushes for an update of the sacramental theology of the Catholic Church, which “still uses the Medieval concept of corporeality which has not been updated by the Second Vatican Council”.13 Making use of the ephemeral character of the miracle of transubstantiation, which is not visible to the eyes, as the host only changes sub species and is dependent on faith, he argues that because telepresence is experienced as real, the faithful can also receive the “Body of Christ […] virtually and spiritually”.14 Relying on and referring to a wide spectrum of (post-)modern media theories, such as Bruno Latour and Michel Callon’s actor-network theory as well as McLuhan’s and Jean Baudrillard’s thinking around media and the simulacrum, which, in Ballano’s perhaps reductive words, all demonstrate “the inseparability of the message and the medium”, he posits that “[i]n telepresence and virtual Eucharist, Catholics become one with the VR, communing with Christ and receiving His body in this level of reality.”15 Even if Ballano’s study is methodologically ambiguous (the study essentially uses modern media theory to plead for a revision of a fundamental theological dogma because, against the backdrop of the probability of future pandemics, “digital reception of the sacraments may become a new normal for Catholics”16 ), it does address an aspect of the connection between miracles and media that is essential to our questioning here: it shows that there is a wish to transcend media, that is, to experience miracles in an immediate way.
In a study on the phenomenon of televised faith healings in American evangelical circles, media theorist Shane Denson also analyses this need for surmounting the medium that displays them. The fact that the televangelist Benny Hinn in his faith-healing broadcasts regularly encourages the faithful to put their hands on the television screen while praying for the person in need of miraculous healing demonstrates that “the obdurate physicality of the apparatus must be overcome, in effect transubstantiated”.17 Arguing from a less pastoral point of view than the authors of the previous examples, Denson points out that this attempt to overcome media is a complex and paradoxical process, during which spectators are both immersed in the televised church service and made aware of the screen of the television medium at the same time:
With eyes closed and a hand on the screen, the serious “viewer” hears the pastor’s charismatic prayer, interspersed with and followed by testimony that he “sees” someone being healed, raising hopes that it could happen to me too. But for it to occur, I must fight against what I, even as a believing viewer, know to be the case: that I am separated by great geographic distances from God’s healing vessel, and that I am engaged in a non-normative or “abnormal” mode of viewing in a project or purpose that defies all scientific rationality.18
These examples of thinking about the miracle of transubstantiation and telepresence show that miracles exist by virtue of perception, immediacy and presence. As soon as a temporal or spatial distance is created between miracles and humans, media need to be engaged to overcome it. Paradoxically, though, as miracles rely on immediacy, these media need to be as transparent and permeable as possible. Miracles, then, fundamentally depend on human perception – something McLuhan has qualified as a miracle in itself: “In ordinary perception men perform the miracle of recreating within themselves – in their interior faculties – the exterior world.”19
2. Reproducing the Miracle of Transubstantiation
When we look at how transubstantiation is discussed in early modern theological treatises, we can observe that even when miracles are discussed at a theological level, they rely on being declared miraculous in media. Both the Jesuit Robert Bellarmine in defending the miracle and the Reformer John Calvin in refuting it are confronted with the fact that miracles need to be perceived and, therefore, medialised as divine acts. As is well known, Bellarmine and Calvin had radically divergent thoughts about Christ’s Real Presence in the host. It is not my goal to provide a full overview of the discussion of a controversy so deeply entrenched in early modern theology and natural philosophy, as this would exceed (by far) the scope of this introduction.20 Rather, I want to look at how both theologians write about this miracle in their dogmatic works and how this specific media constellation – namely, that of double-column folio pages, chapters, subchapters, paragraphs and cross-references – reproduces miracles. As we will see, both authors refer to miracles other than transubstantiation to strengthen their theological positions. This scholarly media environment allows for, or at least suggests the possibility of a fundamental and precise discussion of transubstantiation. Indeed, both theologians – Bellarmine in his Disputationes de Controversiis (1586) and Calvin in his Institutiones (1559) – present their arguments with detailed explanations grounded in the laws of physics. By looking at their explanations, one can also observe their attempts to keep the balance between veracity and incredibility. As we will see, Bellarmine clearly emphasises the supernatural dimension of miracles, whereas Calvin tends to explain them in terms of natural plausibility. Finally, though, I argue that the texts of both theologians have a declaratory function more than an epistemic one.
Transubstantiation is by its very nature a miracle with a medial function as well as a miracle of mediation: not only is it at the centre of the sacrament of the Eucharist that mediates God’s grace, but transubstantiation miraculously makes Christ’s body present on earth while he is in heaven at the same time, thus allowing him to mediate between humans and God.21 As transubstantiation is a miracle that must remain invisible to the human eye, the host only being transformed on the substantial and not on the visible accidental level, there is an extraordinary need to point it out. The liturgy of Mass, then, is an inter- and multimedia constellation of objects, rituals, scents, light and sound that medialises, that is, makes perceivable, the miracle of transubstantiation.22 Though the dogmatic texts discussed below do not explicitly aim to mediate transubstantiation – Calvin’s aim is, of course, to refute it – I argue that even theoretical discussions of transubstantiation and other miracles implicitly turn into medialisations of miracles.
In his apologetic work Disputationes de Controversiis christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos (Disputations on the Controversies of the Christian Faith against the Heretics of This Time), published from 1586 onwards, Bellarmine defends the main Catholic dogmas against Protestant “heresy”. In the third book of the controversy on the sacrament of the Eucharist, he puts up a defence of the Real Presence of Christ in the host by elaborating on a central objection of Calvin, which consists of the assumption that bodies cannot be in two places at the same time.23 With his work, Bellarmine aims to rationally prove that Christ can be bodily present in the host and that bodies can be in two places simultaneously. In her analysis of the natural philosophical implications of the controversy between Bellarmine and Calvin, literary historian Debora Shuger wittily notes that Bellarmine could, therefore, be imagined “giving a high-five to Niels Bohr”,24 thus reminding us of the quantum physicist once more. After presenting philosophical, patristic and biblical support for his thesis, in the sixth chapter of his third book, Bellarmine brings forward the argument that God has the power to do things impossible to man, that is, to perform miracles. To demonstrate this thesis, he brings up a few exemplary biblical miracles that relate to bodies and the space they physically occupy. He does so to counter another objection of his Protestant opponents, according to which Christ could not be bodily present in the host because the small communion wafer could never physically contain Christ’s body.
Bellarmine starts his argument by referring to Matthew 19:23, where Christ states that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God. In the biblical narrative, following this comparison, the disciples begin to doubt that anyone can be saved at all. To reinsure them, Christ answers that with God all things are possible (Matthew 19:25). This declaration is essential to Bellarmine’s argument, who then continues his line of reasoning by stating that it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for Christ to be present in the sacramental bread. After all, the proportions of Christ’s human body are closer to those of a communion wafer than the proportions of a camel are to those of the eye of a needle: “Indeed there is less proportional equivalence between the opening of a needle and a camel than between a consecrated host and the body of the Lord.”25 If God can make a camel go through the eye of a needle, Bellarmine implies, then surely the body of Christ could also be present in the host. The cardinal further complicates his argumentation and excludes reasoning that would make the proposition of a camel fitting through the eye of a needle, and therefore the miracle of transubstantiation, more plausible. If the disproportionality between the camel and the opening of a needle were to be reduced, for example, by translating the Latin camelus with sailor’s rope, as some have done according to Bellarmine, Christ’s proposition might seem somewhat more possible. But even if that were the case, to humans, Bellarmine states, it would still be impossible to comprehend how one would fit inside the other:
Unless someone says that by camel [camelus] we do not understand that large animal which we call a camel, but a sailor’s rope, as some have thought after Theophylactus, chapter 19 of [the Explanation of the Holy Gospel according to] Matthew. But even if in that case there was less proportional equivalence between the body of the Lord and the consecrated Host than between the sailor’s rope and the eye of a needle; nevertheless, this will also be impossible to men, as the Lord says and as experience teaches. For who can understand in what way the thickest ropes, like those used by sailors, can pass through the eye of a needle?26
In the end, then, the transubstantiation of the host must remain incomprehensible to humans and therefore a miracle.
With this argument, however, Bellarmine does not want to imply that God’s power to perform miracles and Christ’s Real Presence should simply be accepted as dogmas. Rather, his reasoning aims to prove that God has the power of physically making it so, that a camel can go through the eye of a needle. Therefore, the same would apply to Christ’s physical presence in the host. Bellarmine continues to explain the rationale behind God’s omnipotence by referring to a letter by Augustine, in which he states that, similar to how God’s grace enables someone rich to enter heaven, he would be able to make a camel go through the eye of a needle. By emphasising that it was Christ himself who said it would be impossible for the rich to enter heaven, Bellarmine thus reinforces the miraculous quality of this deed:
Therefore Augustine [in Letter 89.4] rightly teaches, that a rich man, even if he does not stop being rich, can through God’s grace and power enter into the kingdom of heaven; admittedly, without God’s grace, through the mere powers of nature, this would not simply be impossible, but completely impossible: it is impossible for all of mankind to be saved without God’s grace, but much more for the rich than for the poor. The same Augustine in the book De spiritu et litera, chapter 1, clearly says that a camel can go through the eye of a needle with the power of God, even if this is never done and never will be done.27
Bellarmine thus underlines God’s power to realise things unimaginable, but not by saying that this should simply be accepted. By bringing up God’s grace – arguably the central feature of the Christian faith for both Catholics and Protestants – he shows that it is an intrinsic characteristic of the Christian God that he brings about the impossible. To further substantiate his argumentation, Bellarmine continues by writing about Christ’s capabilities to manipulate the laws of physics. For example, he mentions the narrative of John 20, where Christ appears to his disciples after his resurrection by entering a room in which the doors had been locked.28 The narratives of Christ’s virgin birth and his ascension into heaven without it needing to be split open are presented as further proof of the fact that Christ’s body can defy the laws of physics, crossing barriers in a way that humans cannot.29 Both examples are explained with great attention to the physical details, which demonstrate God’s power to defy the ordinary laws of nature and therefore simultaneously underline the veracity and the miraculous quality of transubstantiation. Bellarmine ends his deliberations by mentioning a few other miracles of physics that prove his argumentation:
God can bring about that the heavy does not weigh, that the coloured cannot be seen, even if it is in light, and the space in between [medium] is transparent, and the eyes of those present are opened and looking at it; that the bright does not shine and the warm does not heat: why, then, could he not make it so that a body does not occupy space?30
He offers biblical and patristic evidence for each of these miracles, of which I will cite only the first one here. According to Bellarmine, God made the heavy not weigh when Christ and Peter walked on water: “The assumption becomes clear from Holy Scripture. For instance, in Matthew 14, Christ and Peter, when they still had mortal bodies, walked across the water.”31
To Bellarmine, then, God’s miracles are, as Shuger puts it, “physics-defying”.32 Thus, Christ’s body can be wholly present in heaven and, simultaneously, in the host without exceeding its size. The medial form of the dogmatic treatise, which is written in argumentative language structured by conjunctions and a visual layout in chapters, subchapters and paragraphs, neatly put on the page in double columns33 gives the reader the impression that Bellarmine is offering them conclusive evidence for the miracle of transubstantiation. But even though his argumentation relies on detailed explanations of the physics of the miracle, which allow him to refute objections made by various Reformers, at no point can Bellarmine fully explain the workings of transubstantiation. Rather, he spreads the burden of evidence by pointing to other miracles that relate to Christ’s body and defy regular physics, as well as by “simply” asserting that with God everything is possible. As we saw above, the cardinal also underscores the incomprehensibility of the miracle. He sometimes uses the word “mysterium” to express that it is only through faith that miracles can be understood. For example, with words that Shuger rightly calls dark,34 Bellarmine refutes the “heretic” argument that Real Presence would be “unworthy to the heavenly Christ” by saying that all “Jews, pagans and heretics” would ridicule not just this mystery but also all the other ones of the Christian faith.35 He replies with another citation from a letter by Augustine in which the church father emphasises the function of faith: “We would not believe in Christ himself if the Christian faith feared the laughter of pagans.”36 Bellarmine’s use of the word “mysterium” leads Shuger to conclude:
Bellarmine’s “mysteries” are not, most of them, miracles in the ordinary sense: not rare instances of divine potentia absoluta overriding the laws of nature. The Trinity, Ascension, and body–soul interface are not, that is, exceptions, but the fundamental realities of the Christian universe, and they do not follow the rules governing ordinary time and space.37
Shuger’s differentiation between ordinary miracles and the overarching incomprehensible mysteries of Christianity makes sense insofar as it clarifies that Bellarmine’s argumentation assumes a physical reality that is fundamentally dominated by the Christian God and in which transubstantiation is the rule rather than the exception. However, I argue that these mysteries are quite similar to miracles, because miracles – and here I paraphrase Augustine’s definition as cited further below – are only perceived as such since their physics is incomprehensible to human understanding. The distinction between miracle and “mystery” (used by Shuger to describe unexceptional miracles), then, arises from the respective distinction between a human and a divine point of view. To demonstrate the importance of the distinction between human and divine perception of the physical world in premodern thinking about miracles, it is worth briefly citing the German Cistercian Caesarius of Heisterbach here. In his thirteenth-century Dialogus miraculorum, which starts with a fictional dialogue between a novice and a monk, who explains to the former what a miracle is. Caesarius, using the monk’s voice, formulates this distinction succinctly:
Novice – What is a miracle?
Monk – We speak of a miracle whenever anything is done contrary to the wonted course of nature, at which we marvel. A miracle which takes place according to higher causes is nothing.38
Just as Shuger refers to a Christian universe that follows different rules than those “governing ordinary time and space”, it seems Caesarius’s monk is saying exactly this as well. From a divine point of view, miracles are non-noticeable events, because to God they are normal. It is perfectly ordinary, then, that Bellarmine – even though the textual genre of the dogmatic treatise and visual layout of his book suggest otherwise – cannot fully clarify the question of transubstantiation. In the end, he must leave the reader with some ambiguity. His proof consists not of concluding arguments but of the weight of evidence accumulated by referring to other miracles, a weight that is also medialised by the many double-column folio pages and numerous chapters. The media of the text and of the book here function as a declaration of the miracle of transubstantiation that works more through abundance than through meticulous explanation.
Calvin’s thinking about the nature of Christ’s corporeal presence shows that he writes and thinks about miracles in quite a different manner than Bellarmine. He is quite plain in rejecting the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, including the assumption that a body can be in a place without taking up space: “But it is the true nature of a body to be contained in space, to have its own dimensions and its own shape. Away, then, with this stupid fiction which fastens both men’s minds and Christ to bread!”39 According to the Reformer, ever since his ascension into heaven Christ is no longer present on earth because his body is “true and natural”.40 As Christ “took our true flesh as he was born of the virgin”,41 Calvin refutes the Catholic view that “it [his body] is in many places at once and not held in any space”.42
Calvin thus clearly refutes the miracle of transubstantiation, but, naturally, he does not reject that Christ had the power to perform miracles, nor does he exclude the occurrence of miracles in his age.43 For the Reformer, though, miracles are not necessarily ostentatious transgressions of the laws of nature, which might be “deceitful tricks [by Satan] rather than true powers”.44 Instead, all divine interventions that further God’s plan for the world are considered miracles.45 These can also be events that take place inside the natural order.46 This further increases the already indispensable function of perception for the miraculous: if miracles can be events that are not clearly extraordinary, then they become fully dependent on humans to perceive and declare them as such. As, in Calvin’s view, the perception of miracles is mediated by faith, this does not mean that events can be randomly declared miracles. In Moshe Sluhovsky’s words: “The miracle occurs not in nature, but in human spiritual understanding, and is depended on our ability to grasp it, on faith.”47
This reasoning about the nature of miracles puts extra weight on the declarative function of the medium of the text. Paradoxically, it also influences how Calvin writes about miracles which clearly are or easily could be considered supernatural. In line with his ‘commonsensical’ view that Christ had a body of flesh, which could therefore only be in one place at once, he thinks about miracles in terms of plausibility. Because in his view Christ’s truly human body must occupy space, Calvin also offers a different explanation for his resurrection from the grave and penetration of locked doors to appear to his disciples than Bellarmine’s, which we examined above. After paraphrasing the Catholic explanation, according to which, in Calvin’s words, “the hardness of the stone yielded at his [Christ’s] approach”, he writes the following:48
Yet it is more probable that the stone was removed at his command, and immediately after he passed through, returned to its place. And to enter through closed doors means not just penetrating through solid matter but opening an entrance for himself by divine power, so that he suddenly stood among his disciples clearly, in a wonderful way, although the doors were locked.49
Rather than underlining Christ’s bodily capabilities of defying physics, Calvin seeks an explanation that is “more probable”. The opening of the door is still only possible through “divine power”, but its physical execution does not need Christ’s body to become permeable, thus making it, at least from Calvin’s perspective, more plausible.
Something similar can be observed in Calvin’s commentary on Matthew 14:28, where he writes the following about the miracle of Jesus and Peter walking on the water:
The power of Christ shone more brightly in the person of Peter, when he admitted him as a companion, than if he had walked alone on the waters. But Peter knows, and the rest see plainly, that, when he does not rest with a firm faith, and rely on the Lord, the secret power of God, which formerly made the water solid, begins to disappear; and yet Christ dealt gently with him by not permitting him to sink entirely under the waters.50
Whereas Bellarmine presents this miracle as proof of Christ’s body being able to defy the laws of physics in ways unknown to man, Calvin has a different explanation for how the miracle was performed. Almost casually, he explains how Christ and Peter could walk on water because God previously made it solid. He does not present the miracle as a physical impossibility but offers an explanation that makes the miracle sound plausible. Whereas Bellarmine stresses that God performs miracles that seem like physical contradictions to humans, Calvin’s commentary validates the plausibility of the miracle because water solidifying occurs naturally when it freezes. He does state that the secret power of God brings about the miracle, but it occurs in a way that seems verisimilar to humans. In line with his exegesis of accommodation, “the process by which God reduces or adjusts to human capacities what he wills to reveal of the infinite mysteries of his being”,51 for Calvin, verisimilitude is a central factor in his thinking about miracles. They are not necessarily physics-defying events but rather foremost signs that become visible only through faith.
Calvin’s strategy of emphasising the natural plausibility of miracles results in the same contradiction as Bellarmine’s focus on supernatural physics. Presented in an equally structured medial form – the 1559 edition of the Institutes consists of four books, each neatly divided into chapters and subchapters printed in the large folio format, with many cross-references in the margins – as Bellarmine’s, his arguments give the impression of explaining miracles but never fully do so. Calvin makes it seem as though miracles are “plainly” explainable, yet because of this conjecture must assert the divine power that enables them. The declaratory function of the medium of the text becomes even more important.
3. Reproducing Miracles in Media
Two things about the relationship between miracles and media can be deduced from the above-given examples. First, as we have established, miracles must be perceived. As extraordinary events, miracles, like media, appeal to the senses. By standing out from the ordinary, they communicate the presence and omnipotence of – in the context of this volume’s focus on early modern Europe – God. As Grizelj has put it, “[t]he decisive element in the miraculous is not the existence of the miracle but the experiencing of the miracle through the observers.”52 Perception is etymologically contained in the word miraculum through the Latin verb mirari (“to wonder, to marvel at”).53 It also plays a fundamental role in premodern discussions about the definition of miracles. Though miracles are colloquially defined as supernatural events,54 it has been clear to theologians and philosophers throughout the history of Christianity – as seen above with Caesarius of Heisterbach – that this qualification is based on a perceived deviation from the laws of nature from a human perspective. Miracles are events that humans cannot reconcile with the usual course of nature as they know it, and they therefore attribute them to divine omnipotence. Famously, Augustine points out that miracles do not go against natural law:
Indeed, men say that all portents are contrary to nature. They are not so, however; for how is that contrary to nature which happens by the will of God, since the will of so great a Creator is certainly the nature of every created thing? A portent, therefore, is an occurrence contrary not to nature, but to nature as we know it.55
Secondly, miracles insist on being reproduced in media. Evoking wonder and curiosity, miracles demand not only to be examined but also to be captured and recorded. Or, as Grizelj puts it in the passage already quoted above, which comes from his magnificent study Wunder und Wunden (2018): miracles are “elusive, extrasensory absences which insist on a semiotic and medial actualization”.56 It is not only because they are ephemeral that miracles evoke a desire to be solidified in media. As miraculous events mediate God’s omnipotence, the most evident goal of reproducing miracles is to disseminate them beyond the circle of direct witnesses and make them perceivable to those who did not observe the events as they occurred.
The reproduction of miracles, though, does not constitute a simple mimetic action, because it is not evident what one perceives when one observes a miracle. As the chapters of this volume show, early modern humans qualified a great variety of events as miracles, ranging from transubstantiation to resurrections and healings, but also creation itself, visions, the rescue of cities from war and conversions. While some of these events are ostentatiously miraculous, others – even when attributed to divine intervention – are often not as obviously supernatural. The veracity of all these types of events can, however, be questioned by pointing out that one can never really know what one perceives. Resurrections and healings might be doubted by giving them a natural explanation or by simply refuting their truth. The rescue of cities from war could easily be attributed to coincidence. Visions and conversions, being events not perceptible by anyone other than the person experiencing them, could be (and often were) presented as products of the imagination or mental illness. Reproducing a miracle, then, was more than depicting or narrating a specific event. Writers or painters also had to actively declare the event a miracle – that is, they had to point out the miracle. Moreover, given the early modern definition of miracles as events that deviate from the perceived ordinary course of nature as a result of divine intervention, they escape human understanding. Reproducing miracles thus also meant capturing events of divine origin within the limited capacities of the human mind and media.
As a consequence, to reproduce miracles, writers, hagiographers, painters, sculptors and other artists had to find the right balance between the marvellous and the verisimilar. For a reproduction of a miracle to move believers, spectators and readers had to accept both the veracity of the miraculous event and be astonished by it at the same time, with the latter depending on the former. This situation confronted artists and writers with another paradox. Whereas the veracity of miracles needed to be confirmed by a discourse of proof that rendered them credible, wonder or astonishment could be evoked by a mere appeal to the incredibility and exceptionality of miraculous events. When artists and writers emphasised the veracity of miracles by offering detailed explanations and testimonies, they ran the risk of undermining the evocation of wonder. Conversely, when the balance tilted too far towards the evocation of wonder (e.g., through hyperbole or other rhetorical devices), viewers or readers might become incredulous.57
Moreover, representations of miracles have not only a devout but also an artistic purpose. Against the backdrop of the category of the marvellous – a central aesthetic and poetic feature of the early modern period – it was artistically attractive to represent miracles.58 Given the dominance of Aristotelian poetics and its focus on the marvellous, miracles also could become part of the narrative material in early modern tragedies and epics. As such, reproductions of miracles took place at the intersection of the miraculous and the marvellous, that is, at the intersection of the religious meaning of miracles and artistic theories of rendering the marvellous.59 The ephemeral and exceptional character of miracles simultaneously demands and challenges their medial reproduction.
Considering that miracles are by definition exceptional events, it seems paradoxical that – as evidenced by the wide variety of miracles discussed in this volume – they were omnipresent in the early modern world. One of the reasons for this paradox is, of course, the premodern definition of miracles, according to which, and as exemplified by the earlier citation from Augustine, they are perceived deviations from the laws of nature. The question of whether an event is a miracle or not can be answered only by those who perceive it, making it a rather flexible concept. Medial reproductions of miracles, then, have a declaratory function and are, as Maniura has put it, “incontestable assertion[s] of miracle”.60
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, in: Oeuvres completes, 2 vols., vol. 2, ed. by Michel Le Guern, Paris: Gallimard, 2000, p. 840. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own. I would like to extend my gratitude to Johanna Abel, whose comments on an earlier version of this text have helped to improve it significantly. All errors are, of course, my own.
Sabine Brückert / Johanna Haberer, “Wunder: wer glaubt denn so was? Wie das Unmögliche manchmal doch möglich wird”, in: Die Zeit, 22.12.2021, p. 1.
See Johanna Haberer / Sabine Brückert, “Das Unmögliche ist möglich. Gibt es Wunder? Ein Exkurs in die Bibel – und sieben Geschichten über kaum glaubliche Begebenheiten, von denen die Welt dieses Jahr erfahren hat”, in: Zeit Magazin, 22.12.2021, pp. 14–28.
Haberer / Brückert, “Das Unmögliche ist möglich” (as note 2), p. 17: “Wer nicht an Wunder glaubt, ist kein Realist.”
Hans Blumenberg, Geistesgeschichte der Technik, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2009, p. 19, as quoted in Mario Grizelj, Wunder und Wunden. Religion als Formproblem von Literatur, Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2018, p. 169: “die Naturordnung [erschien] grundsätzlich als durchbrechbar”.
See Thibault Catel, “Du présage à la merveille: L’exemplarité contrariée dans les Histoires prodigieuses de Boaistuau”, in: Les Histoires tragiques du XVIe. Pierre Boaistuau et ses émules, ed. by Jean-Claude Arnould, Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2018, pp. 137–153.
See, for example, the following titles: Histoire veritable de la guérison admirable, advenue et faicte par la bonté et misericorde de Dieu tout puissant […], Paris: Nicolas Chesneau, 1578; Histoire véritable et miraculeuse, d’un jeune homme de Tolose, nommé Estienne Portail; lequel a esté pendu par trois fois, par quelques habitans de la ville de Revel: Mais ayant fait sa prière à Dieu, et à la Vierge Marie, il a esté exempté de la mort, et délivré d’entre les mains de ses ennemis. Le tout vérifié, par ordonnance de la Cour de Parlement de Tolose, après la déposition de plusieurs tesmoins, faisans profession de la Religion prétendue réformée, Toulouse: Vefve Jaques Colomiez & Raymond Colomiez, 1628. On the subject of truth in this literary genre, see Kathleen P. Long, “Monsters and the Monstrous: Witches and Werewolves in Early Modern French and Italian Tales”, in: Suzanne Magnanini (ed.), A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in the Age of the Marvelous, London: Bloomsbury, 2021, pp. 119–148, here pp. 122–123; Winfried Wehle, Novellenerzählen. Französische Renaissancenovellelistik als Diskurs, Munich: Wilhelm Finke, 1984, pp. 183–186.
Grizelj, Wunder und Wunden (as note 4), p. 8: “schwer bestimmbare, übersinnliche Abwesenheiten [die] auf semiotische und mediale Vergegenwärtigung drängen.”
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, London: Routledge, 2001 [1964], pp. 7–23. For the Catholic roots of McLuhan’s media theory, see Ricarda Höffler, “‘Yes, I am a Catholic, the Worst Kind – a Convert.’ Marshall McLuhan und das Urmedium Christus”, in: Scientia Poetica 28 (2024), pp. 155–186.
Anthony R. Lusvardi, S.J., “We should stop filming the Liturgy of the Eucharist”, in: America: The Jesuit Review, 25.11.2020 [https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/11/24/livestream-mass-liturgy-coronavirus-stop] (last accessed 23.07.2024).
Felix Just, S.J., “Real Presence and Virtual Liturgies. The Difference between Watching Mass on TV and Participating in a Live-Streamed Liturgy”, in: La Croix. International, 29.04.2020 [https://international.la-croix.com/news/religion/real-presence-and-virtual-liturgies-part-ii/12271]. (last accessed 23.07.2024).
Felix Just, S.J., “Real Presence and Virtual Liturgies” (as note 10). Just uses quotation marks for emphasis.
Vivencio O. Ballano, “COVID-19 Pandemic, Telepresence, and Online Masses: Challenging Catholic Sacramental Theology”, in: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Global Studies 16, no. 1 (2021), pp. 41–53, here p. 41 [doi:10.18848/2324-755X/CGP/v16i01/41-53].
Ballano, “COVID-19 Pandemic, Telepresence, and Online Masses” (as note 12), p. 46.
Ballano, “COVID-19 Pandemic, Telepresence, and Online Masses” (as note 12), p. 48.
Ballano, “COVID-19 Pandemic, Telepresence, and Online Masses” (as note 12), p. 50.
Ballano, “COVID-19 Pandemic, Telepresence, and Online Masses” (as note 12), p. 46.
Shane Denson, “Faith in Technology: Televangelism and the Mediation of Immediate Experience”, in: Phenomenology & Practice 5, no. 2 (2011), pp. 96–122, here p. 108.
Denson, “Faith in Technology” (as note 17), p. 110.
Marshall McLuhan, “Catholic Humanism and Modern Letters, 1954”, in: Eric McLuhan / Jacek Szklarek (eds.), The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion, Toronto: Stoddart, 1999, pp. 153–174, here p. 165.
For a contextualisation of Bellarmine’s and Calvin’s thinking in relation to early modern natural philosophy, see Debora Shuger’s enlightening study “Bodies Behaving Badly: The Eucharist and the New Philosophy”, in: Reformation 29, no. 1 (2024), pp. 46–58 [https://doi.org/10.1080/13574175.2024.2322933]. For a general overview on the theology of transubstantiation, see Hans Jorissen, “Transsubstantiation”, in: Walter Kasper (ed.), Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 10, Freiburg: Herder, 2001, pp. 177–182; Robert J. Daly, “Robert Bellarmine and Post-Tridentine Eucharistic Theology”, in: Theological Studies 61, no. 2 (2000), pp. 239–260; Bryan D. Spinks, Do This in Remembrance of Me: The Eucharist from the Early Church to the Present Day, London: SCM Press, 2013; Christian Link, Die Theologie Calvins im Rahmen der europäischen Reformation, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021.
See Walter E. Melion, “Quid est sacramentum?: Introduction”, in: id. / Elizabeth Carson Pastan / Lee Palmer Wandel (eds.), Quid est sacramentum? Visual Representation of Sacred Mysteries in Early Modern Europe, 1400–1700, Leiden: Brill, 2019, p. 5. On the mediality of Christ, see Christian Kiening, “Mediologie – Christologie: Konturen einer Grundfigur mittelalterlicher Medialität”, in: id. (ed.), Modelle des Medialen im Mittelalter, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010, pp. 16–32. Johann Anselm Steiger has convincingly argued that the mediality of Christ is fundamental for the early modern use of media in a spiritual context; see Johann Anselm Steiger, Spiritual Intermediality and Spiritual Emblematics in the Early Modern Era: Media Theoretical and Historical Theological Foundations, Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2024. On the topic of spiritual intermediality see also Marlene Dirschauer, Rogier Gerrits, Marc Föcking, Alec Ryrie (eds.), Practising Piety. Spiritual Intermediality and Devotion in Early Modern Europe, Leiden: Brill, 2025.
For studies on the function of media in the Eucharistic rite, see Joseph Imorde, Präsenz und Repräsentanz, oder: die Kunst, den Leib Christi auszustellen, Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 1997; Stefanie Ertz / Heike Schlie / Daniel Weidner (eds.), Sakramentale Repräsentation Substanz, Zeichen und Präsenz in der Frühen Neuzeit, Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2012; Grizelj, Wunder und Wunden (as note 4), pp. 96–141; Katherine D. Scherff, The Virtual Liturgy and Ritual Artifacts in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, New York: Routledge, 2023; Jenny Körber, Innere Bilder – äußere Schau Studien zum Mediendispositiv des frühneuzeitlichen Jesuitenordens, Cologne: Böhlau, 2024.
See, for example, John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols., vol. 2, ed. by John T. McNeil, transl. by Ford Lewis Battles, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960, p. 1373: “For as we do not doubt that Christ’s body is limited by the general characteristics common to all human bodies, and is contained in heaven (where it was once for all received) until Christ returns in judgment, so we deem it utterly unlawful to draw it back under these corruptible elements or to imagine it to be present everywhere.” John Calvin, Joannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia, 59 vols., vol. 2: Institutio Christianae Religionis, IV, 17, 12, ed. by Edouard Cunitz / Johann-Wilhelm Baum / Eduard Wilhelm Eugen Reuss, Brunsvigae: C.A. Schwetschke, 1864, p. 1011: “Siquidem ut finitum esse, pro perpetua corporis humani ratione, minime ambigimus, coeloque contineri, quo semel receptum est, donec ad iudicium redeat: ita sub haec corruptibilia elementa retrahere ipsum, aut ubique praesens imaginari, prorsus ducimus nefas esse.”
Shuger, “Bodies Behaving Badly” (as note 20), p. 57.
Disputationum Roberti Bellarmini Politiani, Societatis Iesu, de controversiae Christianae fidei, adversus huius temporis haereticos, 3 vols., vol. 2, Ingolstadt: David Sartorius, 1591, p. 687: “immo minor est proportio foraminis acus ad camelum, quam hostiae consecratae ad corpus Domini.”
Bellarmino, Disputationum (as note 25), p. 687: “nisi quis dicat per camelum non intelligi magnum illud animal, quod camelum vocamus, sed funem nauticum, ut quosdam sensisse testatur Theophylactus in cap. 19. Matthaei. Sed tum erit quidem minor proportio corporis Domini ad hostiam consecratam, quam cameli ad foramen acus; tamen etiam hoc erit hominibus impossibile, ut Dominus dicit, et ut experientia docet. Quis enim intelligat, qua ratione possit crassissimus funis, quales nautici sunt, per foramen acus transire?”
Bellarmino, Disputationum (as note 25), p. 688: “Quare Augustinus epist. 89 quaest. 4 rectem docet, posse hominem divitem, etiamsi non desinat esse dives, per Dei gratiam, & potentiam ingredi in regnum coelorum; licet sine gratia Dei solis viribus naturae non solum impossibile sit, sed etiam valde impossibile: omnibus enim hominibus impossibile est sine gratia Dei salvari, sed multo magis divinitibus, quam pauperibus. Idem etiam Augustinus, libro de spiritu, & litera, cap. 1. apertem dicit, posse camelum per Dei potentiam transire per foramen acus, licet id nunquam sit factum, & nunquam fortasse futurum.”
See Bellarmino, Disputationum (as note 25), p. 688.
For the virgin birth, see Bellarmino, Disputationum (as note 26), pp. 690–692. For Christ’s resurrection and ascension, see Bellarmino, Disputationum (as note 25), pp. 693–696.
Bellarmino, Disputationum (as note 25), p. 695: “Sed potest Deus efficere, ut grave non ponderet, ut coloratum non videatur, etiamsi sit in lumine, & medium sit diaphanum, & oculi astantium sint aperti, & intenti; ut lucidum non luceat, & calidum non calefaciat: cur igitur facere non poterit, ut corpus quantum non occupet locum?”
Bellarmino, Disputationum (as note 25), p. 695: “Assumptio perspicua est in divinis literis. Nam Matth. 14. Christus, & Petrus cum adhuc corpora mortalia haberent, super aquas ambularunt.”
Shuger, “Bodies Behaving Badly” (as note 20), p. 53.
Shuger, “Bodies Behaving Badly” (as note 20), p. 46. The Controversiae “fill approximately three-thousand double-column folio pages, not counting indices.”
See Shuger, “Bodies Behaving Badly” (as note 20), p. 56.
Bellarmino, Disputationum (as note 25), p. 717: “Neque enim solum hoc mysterium, sed omnia fere alia Iudaei, pagani, haeretici tanquam indigna, et stulta irriserunt.”
Bellarmino, Disputationum (as note 25), p. 717: “[D]e quibus Augustinus in epist. 49. ad Deogratias, quaest.6. in ipsum, inquit, Christum non crederemus, si fides Christiana cachinnum metueret paganorum.”
Shuger, “Bodies Behaving Badly” (as note 20), p. 54. Original emphasis.
Caesarius von Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles, transl. by H. von E. Scott / C. C. Swinton Bland, with an introduction by G. G. Coulton, vol. 2, New York: Hartcourt, Brace and company, 1929, 171: “Novicius – Quid est miraculum? Monachus – Miraculum dicimus quicquid fit contra solitum cursum naturae, unde miramur. Secundum causas superiores miraculum nihil est.”
Calvin, Institutio, IV, 17, 29 (as note 23), p. 1030: “Atqui haec est propria corporis Veritas, ut spatio contineatur, ut suis dimensionibus constet, ut suam faciem habeat. Facessat igitur stultum ittud commentum quod tam mentes hominum quam Christum pani affigit.” Translation in Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (as note 24), p. 1400.
Calvin, Institutes, (as note 23), p. 1399. Calvin, Institutio, IV, 17, 29 (as note 23), p. 1029: “verum et naturale.”
Calvin, Institutes, (as note 23), p. 1399. Calvin, Institutio, IV, 17, 29 (as note 23), p. 1030: “Quid enim clarius tradit tota scriptum, quam Christum, ut veram nostram carnem induit quum e virgine natus est, in vera carne nostra passus est, quum pro nobis satisfecit, ita eandem veram carnem et resurgendo recepisse, et in coelum sustulisse?”
Calvin, Institutes (as note 23), p. 1399. Calvin, Institutio, IV, 17, 29 (as note 23), p. 1029: “multis in locis simul esse, nulloque spatio contineri.”
See Moshe Sluhovsky, “Calvinist Miracles and the Concept of the Miraculous in Sixteenth-Century Huguenot Thought”, in: Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 19, no. 2 (1995), pp. 5–25.
Calvin, “Prefatory Address to King Frances”, in: Institutes (as note 23), p. 17. Calvin, Institutio (as note 23), p. 16: “Et meminisse nos decet, sua esse satanae miracula, quae tametsi praestigiae sunt magis quam verae virtutes, sunt tarnen eiusmodi quae imprudentes et imperitos deludant.”
See Sluhovsky, “Calvinist Miracles” (as note 43), p. 10.
On Calvin’s thinking about the natural order, see Susan E. Schreiner, The Theater of His Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin, Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1991.
Sluhovsky, “Calvinist Miracles” (as note 43), p. 10.
Calvin, Institutes (as note 23), p. 1400. Calvin, Institutio, IV, 17, 29 (as note 23), p. 1030: “ad eius occursum se flexit lapidis durities.”
Calvin, Institutes (as note 23), p. 1400. Calvin, Institutio, IV, 17, 29 (as note 23), p. 1030: “Etsi probabilius est, eius imperio amotum fuisse lapidem, et mox transitu dato, in suum locum rediisse. Nec ianuis clausis intrare tantundem valet ac penetrare per solidam materiam, sed sibi aditum patefacere divina virtute, ut repente steterit inter suos discipulos, plane admirabili modo, quum obseratae essent fores.”
John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, 3 vols., vol. 2, Matthew 14:28, ed. by William Pringle, Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845, p. 241.
Edward A. Dowey Jr., The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology, New York: Columbia University Press, 1952, p. 3. See also Ford Lewis Battles, “God Was Accommodating Himself to Human Capacity”, in: Interpretation 31 (1977), pp. 19–38; David F. Wright, “Calvin’s Accommodating God”, in: Wilhelm H. Neuser / Brian G. Armstrong (eds.), Calvinus Sincerios Religionis Vindex, Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1997; Lutz Danneberg, “Von der accommodatio ad captum vulgi über die accommodatio secundum apparentiam nostri visus zur aestetica als scientia cognitionis sensitivae”, in: Torbjörn Johansson / Robert Kolb / Johann Anselm Steiger (eds.), Hermeneutica Sacra: Studien zur Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010, pp. 313–379.
Mario Grizelj, “Ekstasis and Paradoxa: The Miracle as Disruption”, in: Lars Koch et al. (eds.), Disruption in the Arts Textual, Visual, and Performative Strategies for Analyzing Societal Self-Descriptions, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018, 37–62, here pp. 46–47 [https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110580082].
See Jacques Le Goff, “Le Merveilleux dans l’Occident médiéval”, in: id. (ed.), Un autre moyen âge, Paris: Gallimard, 1999, p. 456; Lorraine Daston / Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750, New York: Zone Books 1998, p. 16.
See, for example, the definition given in Furetière’s Dictionnaire universel: “MIRACLE, se dit aussi d’un effet extraordinaire & merveilleux qui est au dessus des forces de la nature” (“MIRACLE, is also said of an extraordinary and marvellous phenomenon that exceeds the forces of nature”). Antoine Furetière, Dictionnaire universel, The Hague: A. et R. Leers, 1690, p. 639.
Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, ed. and transl. by R. W. Dyson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 1061. Augustinus Hipponensis, De Civitate Dei, 21, 8, ed. by A. Dombart, Turnhout: Brepols, 1955, pp. 771: “Omnia quippe portenta contra naturam dicimus esse; sed non sunt. Quo modo est enim contra naturam, quod dei fit uoluntate, cum uoluntas tanti utique conditoris conditae rei cuiusque natura sit? Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura.” See also Augustinus, Contra Faustum Manichaeum libri triginta tres 26, 3, ed. by I. Zycha, Prague: 1891, p. 731: “Sed contra naturam non incongrue dicimus aliquid deum facere, quod facit contra id, quod nouimus in natura. Hanc enim etiam appellamus naturam, cognitum nobis cursum solitumque naturae, contra quem deus cum aliquid facit, magnalia vel mirabilia nominantur. Contra illam vero summam naturae legem a notitia remotam siue inpiorum, siue adhuc infirmorum, tam deus nullo modo facit quam contra se ipsum non facit.” Translated in Augustine, Answer to Faustus a Manichaean, transl. R. J. Teske, Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2007, pp. 389–390: “But it is not wrong for us to say that God does contrary to nature what he does contrary to what we know of nature. For we also call nature the usual course of nature known to us, and, when God does something contrary to it, these actions are called marvellous and miraculous. But God does nothing contrary to that supreme law of nature which is removed from the knowledge of those who are wicked and still weak, just as he does nothing contrary to himself.” See also John A. Hardon, S.J., “The Concept of Miracle from St. Augustine to Modern Apologetics”, in: Theological Studies 15, no. 2 (1954), pp. 229–257; Lorraine Daston, “Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence”, in: Critical Inquiry 18, no. 1 (1991), pp. 93–124, here pp. 95–97; Caroline W. Bynum, “Wonder”, in: The American Historical Review 102, no. 1 (1997), pp. 1–26; Alexander C. T. Geppert / Till Kössler, “Einleitung: Wunder der Zeitgeschichte”, in: id. (eds.) Wunder: Poetik und Politik des Staunens im 20. Jahrhundert, Berlin: Surhkamp, 2011, pp. 49–68.
Mario Grizelj, Wunder und Wunden (as note 4), p. 8: “schwer bestimmbare, übersinnliche Abwesenheiten [die] auf semiotische und mediale Vergegenwärtigung drängen.”
For an analysis of how hagiographers deal with this problem, see Rogier Gerrits, “Entre le merveilleux et le vraisemblable: la représentation des miracles dans les hagiographies post-tridentines”, in: Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature 49, no. 96 (2022), pp. 65–84.
On the marvellous as an aesthetic category, see Karlheinz Barck, “Wunderbar”, in: id. et al. (ed.), Ästhetische Grundbegriffe. Historisches Wörterbuch in sieben Bänden, vol. 6, Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2005, pp. 730–773; James V. Mirollo, “The Aesthetics of the Marvelous: The Wondrous Work of Art in a Wondrous World”, in: Peter G. Platt (ed.), Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture, Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1999; Joy Kenseth (ed.), The Age of the Marvelous, Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, 1991.
Although philosophers and theologians have always distinguished between miracles of divine origin (miracula) and miracles of nature and the arts (mirabilia), the terms share their etymological origin in the Latin “mirari”. See Jacques Le Goff, “L’imaginaire médiéval: le merveilleux dans l’Occident médiéval”, in: id. (ed.), Un autre Moyen Âge, Paris: Gallimard, 1999, pp. 421–770, here p. 456; Bernard Vouilloux, “Avant-propos”, in: Aurélia Gaillard / Jean-René Valette (eds.), La beauté du merveilleux, Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2011, p. 14: “mirabilia et mirabilis se rattachent à la racine mir- (présente dans miroir, mirari, mirus), qui implique le regard, sens esthétique s’il en est” (“mirabilia and mirabilis are connected to the root mir- (present in mirror, mirari, mirus), which involves the gaze, in the aesthetic sense, that is”).
Robert Maniura, Art and Miracle, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, p. 176.