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On the Distinction between True and False Visions
In On the Distinction between True and False Visions, an expert
on the subject, Jean Gerson, in around 1400, summarized the
criteria for recognizing a credible witness of an apparition: one
was the willingness to accept advice from the political and
religious hierarchy. Thus anyone seeing a vision disturbing to
those in power was ipso facto an unreliable witness, and saints and
virgins could be made to say whatever the authorities wanted to
hear.
The 'signs' allegedly provided by Mary, the evidence offered
and considered compelling, included an ordinary candle, a piece
of silk, and a magnetic stone; a piece of coloured tile; footprints;
the witness's unusually quick gathering of thistles; a simple
wooden cross inserted in the ground; welts and wounds on the
witness; and a variety of contortions - a 12-year-old with her hand
held funny, or legs folded back, or a closed mouth making her
temporarily mute - that are 'cured' the moment her story is
accepted.
In some cases accounts may have been compared and coordinated
before testimony was given. For example, multiple witnesses
in a small town might tell of a tall, glowing woman dressed
all in white carrying an infant son and surrounded by a radiance
that lit up the street the previous night. But in other cases, people
standing directly beside the witness could see nothing, as in this
report of a 1617 apparition from Castile:
'Aye, Bartolome, the lady who came to me these past days is
coming through the meadow, and she is kneeling and embracing
the cross there - look at her, look at her!' The youth
though he looked as hard as he could saw nothing except
some small birds flying around above the cross.
Possible motives for inventing and accepting such stories are
not hard to find: jobs for priests, notaries, carpenters and
merchants, and other boosts to the original economy in a time
of depression; augmented social status of the witness and her
family; prayers once again offered for relatives buried in
graveyards later abandoned because of plague, drought and
war; rousing public spirit against enemies, especially Moors;
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