Apparition Fever: Observing the Virgin Mary in Belgium - Couverture souple

Van Osselaer, Tine

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0228024722 ISBN 13 : 9780228024729

Editeur : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2025

Synopsis

In the early 1930s, a wave of Marian apparitions – cases in which visionaries reported seeing and receiving messages from the Virgin Mary – swept over Belgium. With over forty apparition sites and hundreds of visionaries, the Belgian apparitions, often attended by crowds of onlookers, were unrivalled in scope and complexity, and they confronted Catholics and others with a question: How do you decide what you believe? Apparition Fever explores the Belgian apparitions from initial reports to the eventual recognition of two episodes in the 1940s. It shows how knowledge was formed at all levels – among the bystanders attending the sites, to the medical experts who studied the visionaries, and the clerical authorities who evaluated the authenticity of the apparitions. Tine Van Osselaer examines how these different perspectives converged and influenced each other, whose authority was accepted or challenged, and how the public character of the events affected their evaluation. Apparition Fever reveals that the public setting of Marian apparitions and the religious enthusiasm they triggered are not novel challenges for the Catholic Church. On the contrary, they have heavily influenced the evaluation of apparitions since the early twentieth century.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Tine Van Osselaer is associate professor in the history of devotion, mysticism, and spirituality at the Ruusbroec Institute of the University of Antwerp.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Date d'édition: 2025
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0228024722
• ISBN 13: 9780228024729
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 366
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Pays-Bas