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The Thomistic Institute

The History of Miracles: A History of the Impossible? | Prof. Carlos Eire

The Thomistic Institute

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Religion &Amp; Spirituality, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8729 Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2022

⏱️ 49 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This lecture was given on March 14, 2022 at Yale University. The handout for this lecture can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/u74wk4hb. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Carlos Eire, who received his PhD from Yale in 1979, specializes in the social, intellectual, religious, and cultural history of late medieval and early modern Europe, with a focus on both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations; the history of popular piety; and the history of the supernatural, and the history of death. Before joining the Yale faculty in 1996, he taught at St. John’s University in Minnesota and the University of Virginia, and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton for two years. He is the author of War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship From Erasmus to Calvin (1986); From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth Century Spain (1995); A Very Brief History of Eternity (2010); Reformations: The Early Modern World (2016); and The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography (2019). And he is co-author of Jews, Christians, Muslims: An Introduction to Monotheistic Religions (1997). He has also ventured into the twentieth century and the Cuban Revolution in the memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana (2003), which won the National Book Award in Nonfiction in the United States and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. His second memoir, Learning to Die in Miami (2010), explores the exile experience. A past president of the Society for Reformation Research, he is currently researching attitudes toward miracles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His recent book Reformations won the R.R.Hawkins Prize for Best Book of the Year from the American Publishers Association, as well as the award for Best Book in the Humanities. It was also awarded the Jaroslav Pelikan Prize by Yale University Press. All of his books are banned in Cuba, where he has been proclaimed an enemy of the state – a distinction he regards as the highest of all honors.

Transcript

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0:00.0

The Thomistic Institute's study abroad program is currently accepting applications for the spring of

0:04.8

2023. Our program, ancient and medieval Rome, crossroads of intellectual traditions, brings

0:11.2

university students from around the world to the heart of the eternal city of Rome. They'll live

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just minutes from the Coliseum, and they'll study at the world-renowned Pontifical

0:21.7

University of St. Thomas Aquinas. Visit tamisticinstitute.org forward slash Rome to learn more.

0:29.0

Financial aid and scholarships are available to qualifying students.

0:33.1

This talk is brought to you by the Tamistic Institute.

0:36.4

For more talks like this, visit us at tamistic institute.org.

0:40.3

An audience member some years ago when I was talking about a subsection of this topic

0:50.3

said, Professor, you're not working on the history of the impossible, you're really working

0:56.0

on the history of the teachers.

0:59.0

But I disagree, and I disagree vehemently with such a summation of what I'm doing.

1:06.0

Miracles are a problem.

1:08.0

In the 21st century, they've been a problem for Westerners since the 16th century.

1:13.6

And part of my lecture today will cover this, when this turn takes place, that miracles become problematic.

1:21.6

But miracles are far from ridiculous.

1:24.6

Miracles get to the very core of religion no matter what religion

1:29.3

you're talking about because miracles are instances of the natural world being

1:38.3

taken over by the supernatural realm by definition as we shall see so let's get to it

1:49.0

Saint Augustine of Hippo fourth fifth century in the city of God already enemies of the Christian religion are asking why don't you have the

2:04.1

miracles that your stories have you know why they say are those miracles which you affirm were

2:09.8

brought formerly no longer happening right I might indeed reply miracles were necessary

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