Historian Tine Van Osselaer has published extensively on Catholicism, its mystical expressions – such as stigmatisation and apparitions – and gender, with a particular focus on the Belgian context. It therefore comes as no surprise that she is affiliated with the well-known Ruusbroec Institute at the University of Antwerp, a leading centre for the study of spirituality in the Low Countries. In the present monograph several strands of her earlier research converge, developed intermittently over a period of ten years. The title is aptly chosen, as there are few countries in the world where, within such a short historical period, so many Marian apparitions were reported. Only Italy experienced a comparable phenomenon during the Cold War, when a similar ‘contagious fever’ or mimetic effect led large numbers of people to claim visions of the Virgin Mary. The Belgian wave preceded the Italian one. Beginning in late 1932 in Beauraing and followed by Banneux in January 1933, a nationwide surge of alleged supernatural events unfolded – apparitions with a strikingly public character. This fever involved hundreds of visionaries and rapidly drew tens of thousands of pilgrims to some forty sites that came to be regarded as hallowed by their pious visitors.
Van Osselaer opens the book with a quotation from the Belgian author Louis Wilmet, who in 1936 was already criticising the way the discourse on apparitions was conducted. He points to the ‘great disillusions’ caused by the superficial judgements of experts and scholars, while at the same time anticipating a future in which these events might follow the trajectory of Lourdes: initial rejection followed by later recognition, ultimately resulting in the emergence of a globally significant shrine. In short, Wilmet was already reflecting on the process by which apparition narratives are rewritten into an official version.
This process of officialisation is described by Van Osselaer as a filtering mechanism applied to the events associated with those forty initial apparition sites. Through this mechanism, claims are separated into the ‘true’ and the ‘false’, the credible and the unreliable. Some elements pass through the filter, while others are excluded. The outcome, the author demonstrates, depends on the actors involved and the power structures at play.
Whereas research on apparitions has typically focused on local cults, visionaries and their experiential narratives, Van Osselaer introduces a novel perspective in apparitional studies by foregrounding what she terms the ‘different types of Catholic knowing’ associated with apparitions. She examines the epistemological dimensions of credibility and trust as they relate to visionaries and their immediate social environments, as well as to medical professionals, the press and the clergy. The latter, she shows, often employed strategic silences during the apparitional process and proved responsive to grassroots commentary and public pressure.
Van Osselaer structures the initial chaos caused by the wave of apparitions by situating it within the historical Belgian context, with its massive public response and the involvement of religious, political and economic actors. Alongside this historical contextualisation, she structures her analysis around four thematic sections: trust (of the laity); competence (of medical professionals); authority (of the clergy); and time (the period of grassroots formation preceding episcopal officialisation). By analysing the apparitional process in this way, she offers a more general reinterpretation of one of the key factors in the formation of visionary culture.
The so-called vox populi, together with the voices of journalists and medical doctors, was from the outset loud and public, which made it delicate for the diocesan authorities to act appropriately. This situation created separate systems of knowledge that functioned in parallel and generated their own discourses, thereby influencing the evaluation process. At the same time, the formal evaluation process itself was questioned by the public sphere and was therefore adjusted. Some discussions took place behind closed doors, and, as is still sometimes the case, bishops remained strategically silent out of fear that they would not be obeyed. They attempted to control religious enthusiasm, with its accompanying desires for pilgrimage, as well as the press.
Lay discernment of the events thus often had a strong impact on the public setting and on later formal investigations, long before official diocesan commissions were established. The laity formed rapid judgements and, often for practical reasons, had already built chapels or introduced practices that were, in effect, premature forms of recognition. The conflict between hierarchy and public frequently resulted in efforts to silence the visionaries, particularly when they opposed their bishop in the conviction that what Mary had communicated to them took precedence over episcopal measures. Consequently, they remained convinced of the authenticity of the apparitions and believed that, in time, everything would be revealed and the hierarchy would ‘see the light’.
The book is constructed with great precision from a full range of voices, from the local social context to papal Rome, drawing primarily on Belgian diocesan and Vatican archival sources – hidden troves of information preserved as time capsules – alongside contemporary newspapers, publications and often previously unknown photographs.
The broader narrative of the filtering process of public elements in relation to the national discourse surrounding Banneux and Beauraing ultimately led, in 1949, to the Church’s formal recognition of both sites. This outcome resulted in the unique situation of two apparitions being formally recognised within the same disputed apparitional wave, located less than one hundred kilometres apart in the French-speaking Walloon region of Belgium.
With its focus on actors and discourse, drawn from unexploited archival sources, Apparition fever represents a valuable addition to the already extensive literature on apparitional culture. It offers a relevant new analysis of the Belgian apparitional wave during the interwar period, examined from the perspective of public (and less public) discourse. Moreover, the book has broader exemplary relevance: as the author notes in the introduction, such modes of dealing with apparitions were not confined to that historical moment but remain a continuing issue within and around the Catholic Church in relation to contemporary apparitional phenomena.
