This short book is a posthumous publication of the American-Israeli scholar Michael Goodich (1944–2006), whose writings illuminated many aspects of medieval life, but notably the cult of the saints in the High Middle Ages. The theologians and canon lawyers of that period were in agreement that miracles were not a decisive proof of sanctity, and might indeed be performed by evil men, but for the vast majority of medieval Christians they were by far the most important feature of a saintly cult. It was the power of a holy man or woman (living or dead) to channel supernatural power, especially the power of wondrous and unexpected healing, which lay at the heart of Christian veneration of saints. Learned churchmen might pronounce that “miracles are not the substance of sanctity, but rather signs of it” (34); the records of thousands of healing miracles attest that for many people, both learned and unlearned, the substance of sanctity was indeed miraculous power.

One major development of the thirteenth century, which is a recurrent theme of the book, is the “concerted attempt to define and formalize the miraculous” (100). This was stimulated both by the elaboration of scholastic philosophy and theology and by the refinement of tests of sanctity in papal canonization processes. Goodich summarizes the typology of miracles to be found in Thomas Aquinas and some other thinkers (he is especially interested in Aquinas's less well-known contemporary Engelbert of Admont) and devotes considerable space to the procedures employed in canonization. These were formal, technical, and legalistic. Witnesses to a miracle had to respond to a set questionnaire, designed to elicit the precise circumstances of the event and to permit the papal commissioners to detect self-contradiction, or discrepancies between witnesses. On occasion medical men might be called in, as in the case of a child in Bergamo in 1313, who recovered from an apparently lethal fall following invocation of St. Peter Martyr; the miraculous status of this event was guaranteed when “twelve of the best physicians in town declared that no natural cure was possible” (95).

Chapter 4 addresses the important issue of doubt about miracles, either in the form of alternative belief systems, such as heresy or Judaism (as might be expected from Goodich's background, he is sensitive to the important part that discussion of miracles played in Jewish-Christian polemic), or in the shape of visceral scepticism and cynicism. Lay people had a healthy suspicion that ecclesiastics might well be promoting a saint's cult out of greed for profit. One Italian vintner refused to attend the feast day of a local saint who was being promoted by the friars, saying, “I do not want to attend the feast of such a fool whom the brethren affirm to be a saint so that they can enrich themselves” (63). Of course, since our sources for the expression of such views are almost entirely hagiographic, these derisive outbursts are invariably followed by supernatural punishment and repentance.

Although the book is brief—only 121 pages of text—it is rich in anecdote. Given the nature of the sources, such a semi-anthologizing approach is natural: collections of miracle accounts take the form of dozens, or even hundreds, of short, discrete narratives and, as has been increasingly recognized over the last few generations, provide one of the richest sources for everyday life in the Middle Ages. Participants in these stories are often poor, young, or female, in contrast to the populations revealed by chronicles or charters, and Goodich devotes some space to the way they can shed light on such elusive topics as “the social history of childhood” (94). He also pursues the issue of genre, analyzing the use of miracle stories in sermons and comparing the use of similar material in canonization hearings and in narrative hagiography. Chapter 7 deals with the intriguing topic of the way a saint's claim to sanctity might be buttressed by appearance in dreams, as in the case of Yves of Tréguier, who appeared to Pope Clement VI to urge him to pursue his canonization, reprimanding him “because I had not advanced his canonization” (45). Yves was canonized in 1347. Despite the elaboration of legal tests and bureaucratic procedures, sanctity could thus still be vindicated by the ancient proofs of dream and vision.

The author did not see the book through press, and one can find examples of repetition, misprints, and other minor flaws of presentation, but the abundant harvest of material here, from both manuscript and printed sources, is a fitting reflection of Michael Goodich's active and enduring fascination with the saints, miracles, and hagiographic writings of high medieval Europe.