The Miracles of St. John of Capistran
Stanko Andric, Croatian Historical Institute
"In 1462 Matthias Corvinus wrote to Pius II about
a problem in the Hungarian kingdom surrounding the late
Observan Franciscan preacher John Capistran (1386-1456).
Corvinus noted the friar was being venerated as a saint.
Something was amiss. Either common people were damned
in ignorance or Capistran was being denied due honor.
Pius did nothing, then promptly died. A decade passed.
Elizabeth Szilagyi, widow of John Hunyadi, again addressed
the pontiff, this time Sixtus IV, with an urgent message
that Capistran continued posthumously to "preach
with his miracles" and should be canonized. ...
Capistran had been a healer, raiser of the dead, controller
of weather, visionary, prophet, exorcist, veterinarian,
crusader, and general thaumaturge. ... A movement for
canonization began upon his death; yet his postmortem
miracles surpass even those in vita. In the fifteenth
century, as many as 500 miracle stories may have been
catalogued, but not everyone was impressed. ... Capistran
became a saint, however, despite these objections, although
the process did not culminate until 1690. ...
Stanko Andric seeks to nuance our understanding of this
subject through his careful study of John Capistran
based upon the manuscripts of Capistranean miracles
in Rome, Paris, Venice, and Naples. The book reveals
enormous erudition supported by extensive and intimate
manuscript knowledge. Andric endeavours to solve the
philological riddle of the Capistranean miracle collections,
widely known to comprise one of the more complex medieval
hagiographies. The results are impressive." - Slavic
Review
"Andric bring to his topic not simply a detailed
knowledge of the local setting but also a keen command
of the medievalist's fundamental tools... His reconstruction
of the dates and circumstances of composition of these
core sources is entirely convincing, and no future scholar
writing about St. John Capistran will be able to (or
want to) ignore Andric's work... it is a fundamental
study (one is tempted to say the fundamental
study) of Capistran's cult in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries..." - Speculum
"...an important contribution to Hungarian social
history, but also of value for the detailed analysis
of the texts, many of which are published for the first
time in an appendix."
- Medium Aevum
"Andric's chief merit is in establishing the authorship
and circumstances of composition of each collection
through an exhaustive analysis of the manuscripts and
an examination of their textual relationship. With great
erudition, he takes the readers through his reasoning
step by step, giving detailed proofs both in the text
and in ample appendixes."
- The American Historical Review
"Enorme è il valore storico del volume,
sia dal punto di vista religioso che da quello riguardante
il culto di san Giovanni da Capestrano e in modo particolare
delle suppliche a lui rivolte e della ricerca dei suoi
miracoli, richiesti da ogni categoria di persone e da
tutte le classi sociali... Le numerose osservazioni
di carattere storico, geografico, economico e sociale
consentono finalmente di far convergere lo sguardo del
lettore nella grande politica religiosa legata alla
canonizzazione dei santi, ma anche nella storia della
vita quotidiana di una determinata popolazione, soprattutto
sulle sue difficoltà, necessità vitali,
malattie, speranze, sogni, angosce esistenziali e ansietà
specifiche." - Collectanea Franciscana
"Das Buch reiht sich ein in die in den 1970er
Jahren einsetzenden interessanten Bestrebungen, Wunderberichte
als historische Dokumente mit nicht nur teologischem,
sondern auch kulturellem und soziologischem Gehalt zu
nehmen, was durchaus zu begrüßen ist. Das
Buch ist somit auch für die spätmittelalterliche
Ordensgesichte wichtig, zugleich für die Geschichte
der Päpste und ker Kreuzzüge und natürlich
auch für die Geschichte des Balkans im MA."
- Mediaevistik
"... une étude solide, fondée sur un
rigoureux inventaire de sources jusqu'a présent
peu connues." - Analecta Bollandiana
"Si la première moitié du livre
vaut par son érudition, la seconde propose d'intéressantes
pistes de réflexion sur la conception de la sainteté
et du miracle dans la société de la fin
du Moyen Âge... Dans leur effort de systématisation
et de clarification, le chapitre 7, et le chapitre 8,
qui analyse les prolongements historiques de cette classification,
et la conclusion qui, courageusement, refuse d'éluder
la question de la définition du miracle, représentent
une avancée par rapport à ce qu'on pouvait
lire jusqu'à présent sur le sujet."
- Le Moyen Âge
Religious history and, in particular, the history of
the cult of saints and their miracles has recently become
one of the most popular fields of historical investigation.
Together with continuing interest in the related ecclesiastic
motivations and the well organized craft of hagiography,
this new interest might be explained by the marvellously
rich details of thousands of witness accounts testifying
to the miraculous help they received from the saint
in times of desparate need. These accounts provide an
unparalleled insight into the history of everyday life
and into the various hardships, illnesses, hopes dreams
and anxieties during the late medieval and early modern
period.
Only two records exist on the history of the medieval
Hungarian kingdom- the thirteenth century canonization
trial of St. Margaret of Hungary and the miracle collections
promoting the canonization of St. John of Capistran,
the victorious Crusader at Belgrade in 1456, who died
thereafter in Ilok (a city located on the periphery
of western Christianity in Croatia). Based on a careful
study of the widely scattered manuscripts on Capistranean
miracles and with the help of a microscopic philological
analysis, the author has managed to reconstruct, for
the first time, one of the most complex miracle collections
in the history of medieval hagiography.
Covering the recording of the first miracle series
by the urban notaries of Ilok, the local hagiographer
of Ilok Franciscans (John Geszti), the vicar general
of the Hungarian province (Stephen Varsányi), and a
number of subsequent editions and amplifications of
this material recycling into the canonization campaign
of St. John of Capistran and the miracles he himself
recorded, The Miracles of St. John of Capistran, is
an outstanding debut by a representative of a new generation
of Central European medievalists.
Contents
Introduction. Chapter 1: The road to Ilok Chapter
2: A portrait of the town Chapter 3: The
death and the corpse Chapter 4: The beginnings
of the canonization campaign, 1456-1463 Chapter 5:
The canonization campaign from the early 1460s to 1526
Chapter 6: A morphology of Capistranean miracles
Chapter 7: Some historical aspects of the miracles
post-mortem Conclusion. Appendices. Bibliography
1st
2000
476 pages, 8 maps, 4 charts
ISBN 978-963-9116-68-9 cloth $49.95 / €42.95 / £31.95
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