TEE VALUE OF WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS. 613 



rarer thing than is often supposed), people whose mythopceic fac- 

 ulty is once stirred are capable of saying the thing that is not, and 

 of acting as they should not, to an extent which is hardly imagin- 

 able by persons who are not so easily affected by the contagion 

 of blind faith. There is no falsity so gross that honest men, and, 

 still more, virtuous women, anxious to promote a good cause, will 

 not lend themselves to it without any clear consciousness of the 

 moral bearings of what they are doing. 



The cases of miraculously effected cures of which Eginhard is 

 ocular witness appear to belong to classes of disease in which 

 malingering is possible or hysteria presumable. Without modern 

 means of diagnosis, the names given to them are quite worthless. 

 One " miracle," however, in which the patient was cured by the 

 mere sight of the church in which the relics of the blessed martyrs 

 lay, is an unmistakable case of dislocation of the lower jaw in a 

 woman ; and it is obvious that, as not unf requently happens in such 

 accidents to weakly subjects, the jaw slipped suddenly back into 

 place, perhaps in consequence of a jolt, as the woman rode toward 

 the church. (Cap. v, 53.)* 



There is also a good deal said about a very questionable blind 

 man — one Albricus (Alberich ?) — who, having been cured, not 

 of his blindness, but of another disease under which he labored, 

 took up his quarters at Seligenstadt, and came out as a prophet, 

 inspired by the archangel Gabriel. Eginhard intimates that his 

 prophecies were fulfilled ; but, as he does not state exactly what 

 they were or how they were accomplished, the statement must be 

 accepted with much caution. It is obvious that he was not the 

 man to hesitate to " ease " a prophecy until it fitted, if the credit 

 of the shrine of his favorite saints could be increased by such a 

 procedure. There is no impeachment of his honor in the supposi- 

 tion. The logic of the matter is quite simple, if somewhat sophist- 

 ical. The holiness of the church of the martyrs guarantees the 

 reality of the appearance of the archangel Gabriel there, and 

 what the archangel says must be true. Therefore, if anything 

 seem to be wrong, that must be the mistake of the transmitter ; 

 and, in justice to the archangel, it must be suppressed or set right. 

 This sort of "reconciliation" is not unknown in quite modern 

 times, and among people who would be very much shocked to be 

 compared with a " benighted papist " of the ninth century. 



The readers of this review are, I imagine, very largely com- 

 posed of people who would be shocked to be regarded as anything 

 but enlightened Protestants. It is not unlikely that those of them 



* Eginhard speaks with lofty contempt of the " vana ac superstitiosa prcesumplio " of the 

 poor woman's companions in trying to alleviate her sufferings with " herbs and frivolous 

 incantations." Vain enough, no doubt, but the " muliercula " might have returned the epi- 

 thet " superstitious " with interest. 



