The When of Levitation in the West September 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Fun and games on the latest Boggart and Banshee podcast with almost an hour given over to questions of levitation and teleportation. As always when I talk to Chris there were revelations, things I’d not realised before. The point that really blew me away was the chronology of levitation. I had assumed that people had always levitated/pretended-to-levitate. But chatting with Chris I realised that it is actually, at least in the west, a much more recent phenomenon.
Here we need to make a distinction between levitation and teleportation. In teleportation people move from one place to another and they are rarely seen doing so. This is perhaps because teleportation is instantaneous in tradition; perhaps because flight is not the point. When Jesus is on top of the temple what matters is not that Jesus was seen flapping through the heavens en route, but that Satan had the power to bring him there (and that JC had the backbone to the resist the temptations that followed). In levitation it is the visual element that matters: the saint/mystic suddenly floats off the ground. The crowd gasps. No one is going anywhere.
From what I can see levitation – observed lighter than air movement – starts, at least in the west, in the later middle ages and perhaps only floats off properly in the early modern period. It is, above all, a product of a new kind of Catholic hagiography (or way of thinking about saints), with an emphasis on introspection and mysticism. All this laughably in a period, when Europe was starting to tear itself apart in religious warfare. The saint falls into ecstasy looking at the host/kissing the pope’s left foot/staring at a cross: suddenly his/her body is up, up and away.
I’d challenge any readers to find example of saintly levitation – ecstatic vertical up-down movement rather than horizontal flight, people going places – much before 1400 in Western Europe. I love to be proved wrong. Drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com
It goes without saying that just because an earlier saint was said to levitate, what really matters is when the material was written down. E.g. Saint Caterina of Siena (1347-1380) lived and allegedly floated before my cut off date. But when was the relevant description put down on vellum?
Simon in the forum is a different kind of flight but interesting.
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As often on my blog the comments are more important than the text and prove that in general terms I was wrong. However, I do think there is a gap from say the later Roman period through to the 1100s where personal levitation is not a thing: certainly not an introspective personal thing. The article Brad references has several levitating objects in that period though. Comments. First up an old friend of this blog Leif: “A few examples of pre 1400 flight:
The final line in your 1 September 2023 post (Simon in the Forum) is intriguing.
In the canonical Book of Acts (chapter 9), Simon uses magic
to convince the multitudes that he is ‘the Great Power of God’.
The apocryphal ‘Acts of Peter’ describes Simon’s levitation as a conjurer’s trick
in a struggle involving Simon and Peter.
Simon states: ‘For I, ascending up, will show myself unto all this multitude, who I am.’
Peter prays: ‘If thou suffer this man to accomplish that which he hath set about, now will all they that have believed on thee be offended, and the signs and wonders which thou hast given them through me will not be believed…’
In context, there seems to have been an association in the 2nd century
between levitation and sanctity or spiritual power.
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The ‘Little Flowers of St. Francis’,
probably written by Ugolino Brunforte (c. 1262 – c. 1348), and based on tradition:
From that hour on, Brother Leo, with great purity and good intention, began earnestly to study the life of St. Francis. And because of his purity, he many times earned the grace to see St. Francis swept up to God and raised bodily from the earth— at times to the height of three arm-lengths, at times four, on occasion as high as the tip of the beech tree, and once so high in the sky and so surrounded by radiance that he could barely see him. And what did this simple friar do when St. Francis was lifted off the ground just high enough so that he could reach him? He would approach softly, embrace him, and kiss his feet, saying tearfully: “My God, have mercy on me, a sinner, and through the merits of this holy man let me find Your grace.”
The Little Flowers of St. Francis.
London : Kegan Paul Trench
Trübner And Co. 1895. p 186-7
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St. Thomas Aquinas was said to levitate. None less than Chesterton wrote on this.
Annoyingly none of the sites I can find lists a source, but one states:
‘One contemporary of St Thomas, a Dominican brother, recorded in his diary that Aquinas had levitated while praying in the chapel. Other friars testified to miraculous events surrounding Thomas during his lifetime.’
https://bigccatholics.blogspot.com/2017/01/twelve-things-about-saint-thomas.html
Another unsourced story is too good to miss:
In a nearby convent there was a nun who had taken to levitating during mystical prayer. The people were, of course, stupefied by this astounding miracle and were flocking to see the flying nun. The novices in Thomas’ friary were just as excited as the others and dragged the great philosopher off to see the floating sister. Thomas joined the crowd and gazed up at this amazing sight. Then, when the brothers asked him what he thought he said, “I didn’t know nuns wore such big boots.”
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Lutgardis of Aywières (1182 – 1246) was said to levitate.
The entry in Key Figures in Medieval Europe (via on Google Books)
makes it sound like the description comes from a hagiography written shortly after her death. [Wiethaus, Ulrike. “Luitgard of Aywieres”, Key Figures in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, ed. Richard K. Emmerson. Routledge, 2013 ISBN 9781136775185, via Google Books].
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We’ve found several Greek saints who levitated.
Like the Catholics, the Greek orthodox writers don’t like to list sources on their web pages.
We have been able to find one well sourced referene, however:
Irene of Chrysobalanton
‘…she distinguished herself by her asceticism, and became abbess during the patriarchate of Methodios I (843-847). Irene continued her ascetic regimen, demonstrated prophetic and visionary powers, the gift of tears and levitation, and the ability to exorcise demons.’
‘A comment in the vita [of the saint] that the dynasty of Basil I extended to the fifth generation strongly suggests a date of composition during the reign of Basil II (976-1025).’
Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography Database
https://www.doaks.org/research/byzantine/resources/hagiography/hagiointro.pdf
pp 52.
It remains to your discretion as to whether Greece counts as Western Europe, of course!
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It also strikes us that levitating Saints may be found in medieval art.
These may be ambiguous on a level that text is not, and at any rate
paintings don’t lend themselves to Google searches– at least not yet. “
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Second up another old friend SD: You could do worse than ask in St Edmund Hall, Oxford, for information about Edmund of Abingdon, Archbishop of Canterbury, d. 1240 according to Wiki, after whom the Hall is named: according to someone from there whom I knew when at Oxford Edmund was a known levitator. I have no other source for that. NB they don’t like to be called Teddy Hall. You may already know the chapter in Norman Douglas’ Old Calabria about the flights of St Joseph of Cupertino, quoting what purport to be eyewitness accounts.
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Third up, Brad:
You might find this article interesting as well: Suspending DisbeliefDUNSTAN LOWE
Classical Antiquity
Vol. 35, No. 2 (October 2016), pp. 247-278 (32 pages)
[Great article on levitating objects]
