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Leap of faith: the miraculous phenomenon of levitating saints

St Joseph of Cupertino liked to nest in the tops of trees, and Allied pilots were dissuaded by the airborne Padre Pio from dropping bombs near his monastery in Apulia

18 November 2023

9:00 AM

18 November 2023

9:00 AM

They Flew: A History of the Impossible Carlos M.N. Eire

Yale, pp.512, 30

The ‘ordinary academic mind’, William James wrote, struggles to recognise things which ‘present themselves as wild facts with no stall or pigeonhole’. The Yale professor Carlos Eire has a passion for them. His erudite, wilfully eccentric study of baroque Catholicism glories in the supernatural powers of holy persons. He showcases two kinds of miracles they performed: levitation and bilocation, the ability to be in two places at once.

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