DOI: 10.1111/rest.12943 Renaissance Studies Vol. 0 No. 0 Nourishing Catholic souls in post-Tridentine miracle narratives Joshua Rushton Tridentine Catholicism had a difficult relationship with miracles. At the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the reforming Catholic Church upheld the role of wonder-working relics and sacred images as adjuncts to Catholic devotion. At the same time, it warned that no new miracles were to be acknowledged, nor any new relics recognized without the nod of approval from reforming bishops.1 The Church strove to ensure that only incontrovertibly true miracles, rather than spurious claims of divine intervention, shaped Catholic life.2 Circumspection aside, recording, recalling and regaling the faithful with miracle stories helped to facilitate Catholic renewal during and after Trent.3 The culture of the miraculous had always been important for Catholics, but its role was sharply accentuated during the reforms of Catholicism implemented throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This article examines the relationship between Italian printed miracle narratives and interior Catholic devotion in the period following the Council of Trent. I argue that these narratives encouraged Catholic readers to examine the state of their interior devotional lives and provided them with broad frameworks for achieving spiritual betterment. Scholars of the medieval period have raised methodological questions regarding the categorization of miracle narratives. Christian Krötzl has lamented the overall lack of attention paid to ‘non-healing’ narratives. He notes that such stories tend to be bundled together regardless of their 1 H. J. Schroeder, The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (Rockford: TAN Books, 1978), 220. On the new urgency around establishing certainty and credibility on spiritual matters in early modern Catholicism, see Stefania Tutino, Credibility, Credulity, and Belief in Post-Reformation Catholicism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). For a relevant case study of how such concerns manifested in the context of Italian sanctity, see her A Fake Saint and the True Church: The Story of a Forgery in Seventeenth-Century Naples (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). 3 Alexandra Walsham, ‘Miracles and the Counter-Reformation Mission to England’, The Historical Journal, 46 (2003), 779–815. Karin Vélez has recently argued that miracle accounts related to the Holy House of Loreto played a significant role in early modern Catholic expansionist enterprises. See her The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto: Spreading Catholicism in the Early Modern World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019). 2 © 2024 The Author(s). Renaissance Studies published by Society for Renaissance Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Joshua Rushton 4 diversities. As Iona McCleery states, coherent examination of non-healing miracles can be difficult in collections where examples are recorded disparately or if they represented only a small proportion of the total narratives in a given work.5 Historians of early modern Catholicism have shown that the miraculous played a central role in the lives of Catholic people. Writing on Florentine canonisation inquiries, Jenni Kuuliala has estimated that the vast majority of post-Tridentine miracle accounts were related to illness, while non-healing miracles constituted only ‘a minority of such events’.6 For Renaissance Italy, Mary Laven has emphasized that the home was a particular site of frequent miracles which kept children safe from harm, and protected Catholics from miscarriages of justice.7 Despite the willingness to take non-healing miracles seriously, current scholarship remains focussed on the relationship between the miraculous and the relief of earthly suffering.8 The primary aim of this article is to contribute to the study of the culture of the miraculous in post-Tridentine Catholic life by focusing on narratives which had spiritual rather than physical outcomes. By drawing attention to this genre of miracle narrative, I bring into focus the messages that Italian readers received about the relevance of miracles for their interior devotional lives. The miracle narratives examined here were concerned with Catholic souls rather than bodies. These stories were not simply manifestations of Tridentine doctrinal priorities and dealt with themes which were both relevant for Catholic people and aligned with some of the most pressing spiritual matters of the day. Yet, current scholarship has emphasized the practical utility of miracles rather than their spiritual potential. Writing on Spanish shrine books, Thomas Devaney has gone as far as to argue that people engaging with miracle narratives ‘had little time for intense self-scrutiny [and] sought mercy at moments of trouble, not (or at least not explicitly) a mystical connection with God’.9 Devaney’s observation reflects the specific genre of miracle-related print which he examines. The miracles that filled the pages of shrine books 4 Christian Krötzl, ‘Miracula post-mortem: On Function, Content, and Typological Changes’, in Miracles in Medieval Canonization Processes: Structures, Functions, and Methodologies, ed. by Christian Krötzl and Sari KatajalaPeltomaa (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 158–9. 5 Iona McCleery, ‘Escaping Justice? The Politics of Liberation Miracles in Late Medieval Portugal’, in A Companion to Medieval Miracle Collections, ed. by Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, Jenni Kuuliala, and Iona McCleery (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 254. 6 Jenni Kuuliala, ‘Cure, Community, and the Miraculous in Early Modern Florence’, in Lived Religion and Everyday Life in Early Modern Hagiographic Material, ed. by Jenni Kuuliala, Rose-Marie Peak, and Päivi RäisänenSchröder (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 266–77. 7 Abigail Brundin, Deborah Howard, and Mary Laven, The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 249–87. 8 A notable exception is the recent edited collection, Miracles, Political Authority and Violence in Medieval and Early Modern History, ed. by Matthew Rowley and Natasha Hodgson (Abingdon: Routledge, 2022). 9 Thomas Devaney, ‘Everyday Miracles in Seventeenth-Century Spain’, in Lived Religion and Everyday Life through Early Modern Hagiographic Material, ed. by Jenni Kuuliala, Päivi Räisänen-Schröder, and Rose-Marie Peake (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 204. 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 2 3 and hagiographies were overwhelmingly concerned with the relief of suffering – the most common motive that drove Catholics to shrines.10 The spiritual growth of the recipient was almost invariably mentioned in such narratives, but they emphasized the transactional nature of the miracle and the immediate benefit gained. Catholic reform placed significant emphasis upon the personal spiritual journeys of the people. Ulrich L. Lehner has recently argued that encouraging the faithful to both live in a state of grace and engage in processes of inner spiritual growth were fundamental goals of Catholic reform.11 Of particular importance is his emphasis on the expanding pool of ‘spiritual resources’, including printed works, available to Catholics seeking to enrich their voluntary devotional lives. Understanding how general goals of spiritual betterment were accomplished has necessitated significant study of how religious messages were communicated to Catholic believers.12 Through close examination of three vernacular miracle collections printed between 1587 and 1597, I consider the role that the miraculous played in nourishing Catholic souls.13 This article draws upon texts printed in Italy and rendered in the Italian vernacular. While I aim to draw attention to the value of non-healing miracles for gauging the spiritual priorities of postTridentine Catholicism, it is appropriate that I confine my arguments to the Italian context. POST-TRIDENTINE MIRACLE COLLECTIONS ‘Miracle book’ is a common term in scholarship on Catholic devotional life. It is also somewhat imprecise and imposes a sense of homogeneity upon a diverse genre of devotional print. Different genres of miracle-related print, such as hagiographies and shrine books, were inherently shaped by local factors. These genres also had promotional qualities and were often used to forward 10 Elizabeth C. Tingle has examined the diverse motivations for pilgrimage to major miraculous shrines in this period. See her Sacred Journeys in the Counter-Reformation: Long-Distance Pilgrimage in Northwest Europe (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2020), 33–75. 11 Ulrich L. Lehner, The Inner Life of Catholic Reform: From the Council of Trent to the Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). 12 Susan C. Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling: Shaping the Religious Emotions in Early Modern Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Moshe Sluhovsky, Becoming a New Self: Practices of Belief in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017); Emily Michelson, The Pulpit and the Press in Reformation Italy (New Haven: Harvard University Press, 2013). Michelson has recently argued for the relevance of conversionary preaching, ostensibly aimed at Jewish listeners, for Catholics in Counter-Reformation Rome. See her Catholic Spectacle and Rome’s Jews: Early Modern Conversion and Resistance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022). 13 These collections are: Miracoli della Sacratissima Vergine Maria: Seguiti a benefitio di quelli che sono stati devoti della compagnia del Sant. Rosario (Venice: Bernardo Giunti, 1591); Nicola Laghi, I miracoli del Santissimo Sacramento, Nuovamente raccolti, & mandate in luce dal R. D. Nicola Laghi da Lugano (Venice: Francesco de’Franceschi, 1597); Silvano Razzi, Miracoli della gloriosa Vergine Maria nostra signora: tratti da diversi catholici, et approvati auttori (Venice: Giacomo Vincenzi, 1587). 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Nourishing Catholic souls Joshua Rushton the cause of specific cults or raise the profile of miraculous sites, many of which proliferated throughout the Italian peninsula in this period. The collections I examine here are representative of a more general approach to printing miracles which valued ubiquitous doctrinal and devotional principles. Neither the texts, nor the stories within that I examine, were rooted in locality. These collections gathered stories, old and new, from across time and place and were organized around Catholic cornerstones: the cult of the Virgin Mary, the Eucharist and the Rosary. These particular texts demonstrate the different approaches that authors could take in compiling their works, especially in terms of levels of engagement with the controversies of the European Reformations. That being said, the main value of this sample of texts is the striking degree of consistency in their author’s framings of the value of miracles for interior devotional life. Silvano Razzi’s Miracoli della gloriosa Vergine Maria contained over 200 miracle stories compiled by the author from a range of ‘approved’ Catholic sources. His work was split into three main books and provided a rich resource for Catholic people seeking to read about Marian miracles. The 1587 edition under study here comprised 247 octavo pages with individual miracle stories rarely occupying more than a full page. Niccolò Laghi’s 1594 Eucharistic collection, I miracoli del Santissimo Sacramento, followed similar lines, although his book was printed in the larger quarto format. Unlike Razzi, Laghi made considerable effort to provide the reader with a breakdown of the doctrinal principles of the Eucharist, but the miracles were the main event. Laghi’s book was expansive and the 1597 edition I refer to here contained upward of 600 pages. The 1591 Rosary collection, Miracoli della Sacratissima Vergine Maria, printed in quarto, was shorter containing 24 miracles across 56 pages. The universality of these texts in terms of the areas of Catholic devotional life that they dealt with mean that they provide access to a wide range of stories of miraculous interventions. Of these narratives, many brought the state of interior Catholic life to the centre of the story. The wider printing context of this sample of texts also indicates that the stories were potentially able to reach a wide market of enthusiastic Italian Catholics. Razzi’s Marian collection appeared in at least 12 mainly octavo editions between 1574 and 1635 in the major Italian print centres of Venice, Rome, Florence, Mantua, and Viterbo. Laghi’s Eucharistic collection went through at least nine editions between 1594 and 1676 by presses in Milan and Venice. The printing context of the 1591 Rosary collection was more modest by comparison appearing in only two known editions, one in 1591 and another in 1594, also in Venice. The address to the reader in these editions is identical to that written by Dominican Andrea Gianetti (d. 1575) for his Rosary manual first published in 1573. From 1587, editions of this manual included this set of miracle stories prefaced by the aforementioned address. The same set of stories were available to readers in Dominican Alberto da Castello’s popular devotional manual first published in 1521 and in many 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 4 5 further editions throughout the sixteenth century. It is unknown who made the decision to publish this set of miracles in standalone editions in 1591 and 1594, but this intentionality is testament to the perceived value of books which placed miracle narratives at the centre of devotional reading. Clerical authorship was the norm for miracle-related genres of print produced in this period. Historians have shown that miracle-related print, shrine books specifically, were typically shaped by contexts of confessional conflict.14 The authors whose works are examined here exhibited varying levels of engagement with the religious controversies of the European Reformations. In terms of content, some collections featured individual or sets of traditional miracles which were circulated in other works well before their publications. Others included a combination of older and more recent wonder stories designed to meet the spiritual needs of a contemporary Catholic readership. The term ‘post-Tridentine’ is used to indicate works published for the first time after Trent rather than as an assumption that a given work was an example of Catholic reaction to the Protestant challenge. Andrea Gianetti’s address to the reader that prefaced the 1591 Rosary miracle collection, for example, made no reference to contemporary heresy. Silvano Razzi (1527–1613), member of the Camaldolese order, made only vague references in his collection of Marian miracles. Conversely, Niccolò Laghi (d.1612), a priest active in Milan, made frequent reference to the Protestant challenge in his Eucharistic collection. These three texts therefore remind us that while miracle culture was shaped by the controversies of the European Reformations, it was not dethatched from those spheres of devotional life that existed to nourish Catholic souls. APPROACHING MIRACLE NARRATIVES: THE CLERICAL PERSPECTIVE Authors had a clear idea about what readers could expect from consuming miracle narratives in an ideal devotional context. Paratextual material, especially addresses to the reader, provides evidence of their attempts to manage the experience of engaging with miracle stories. Helen Smith and Louise Wilson have suggested that paratextual material not only aimed to shape the reader’s approach to a text but also how they interpreted ‘the world beyond the book’.15 The addresses in the texts under examination here also intended to shape interpretations beyond the book to influence the ways that readers related to the miraculous in their interior devotional lives. Authors emphasized the important role that miracle narratives could play in encouraging spiritual growth, but only if interior spiritual 14 Philip Soergel, Wondrous in his Saints: Counter-Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Virginia Reinburg, Storied Places: Pilgrim Shrines, Nature, and History in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 15 Helen Smith and Louise Wilson, ‘Introduction’, in Renaissance Paratexts, ed. by Helen Smith and Louise Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 6. 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Nourishing Catholic souls Joshua Rushton engagement was applied to the process of reading them. These prefatory comments allow for the reconstruction of the ideal devotional contexts in which these books could be used in voluntary devotional life. The spiritual value of miracles was the main point that the compilers sought to get across to potential readers. The address in the 1591 Rosary collection appreciated that wonder stories, perhaps more in their details than core truths, might over-extend the credulity of even the most willing Catholic. The author nonetheless assured the reader that if in these miracles you find something that does not seem to you right to your wits and that exceeds the ordinary order, then you must conclude that miracles are all the truer […] finding in these undermentioned miracles some things, which to the proud seem basic things, & alien to the common cause, you will conclude from this that they are all the truer.16 For the compiler of this book, it was the astonishing nature of the miracle which meant that it ought to be believed. Having cleared up any potential doubts, the author emphasized that reading about miracles provided a route to spiritual transformation. The address encouraged Catholics to ‘read them [the miracles] with faith and humility, that you will feel yourself growing in faith, hope, and charity’.17 The use of the verb sentire – ‘to feel’ – in this case is significant. The promised transformation occurred through affective engagement with miracle narratives. The interior spiritual excitement that miracle stories could provoke featured also in Niccolò Laghi’s address to the reader in his Eucharistic collection. Laghi explained that ‘the cold of heart will be able to obtain the true warmth of devotion’ by reading his book.18 He further emphasized that ‘these most miraculous stories are skilful in moving human hearts in true devotion’.19 The framing of spiritual growth in terms of changes in spiritual temperature, and the stirrings of the heart especially, are significant in the Catholic context. Writing on early modern Catholic sermons, Susan Karant-Nunn states that ‘while preachers invoke it [the heart] metaphorically, they simultaneously mean it physically as the seat of sincerity, contrition, and emotion’.20 In the same way, Laghi’s invocation of the Catholic heart in this case referred to a literal rather than rhetorical process of spiritual betterment. A final example of these sentiments comes through the address to the reader in Silvano Razzi’s Marian miracle collection. 16 ‘Prudente Lettore, se in questi Miracoli troverai qualcosa che non ti paia che quadri al tuo ingegno, & che eccedino l’ordine ordinario allhor devi concludere esser tanto più vero il miracoli […] trovando in questi infrascritti miracoli alcune cose che ai superbi pareno cose base, & aliene dal corso commune, tu concluderai da questo esser tanto più vere’. Anonymous, Miracoli della Sacratissima Vergine Maria, A2. 17 ‘Leggile con fede, et humilità che ti sentirai à crescer la fede, la speranza, & la carità’. Ibid., A2. 18 ‘i raffredati cuori quiui potranno cavarne il vero calore della divotione’. Laghi, I miracoli del Santissimo Sacramento, b. 19 ‘queste historie tāto miracolose siano habile ad intenerire i cuori humani’. Ibid., 36. 20 Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Feeling, 248. 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 6 7 He too told his readers that those who ‘voluntarily read will illuminate themselves to greater devotion’.21 For Razzi, the benefit derived from miracle narratives was an intuitive and straightforward process that brought readers ‘simply to God’.22 But, how ‘simple’ were these texts in practice? The ideal readers of the books examined here were pious Catholics with a degree of vernacular literacy. The choice of the vernacular and the deliberate use of a simple style was elaborated on by several authors. Such comments were informed by an abiding concern that the culture of the miraculous should be accessible to all Catholics. Niccolò Laghi explained that ‘this my composition is not accompanied by that beautiful flow or ornate words that others of quick spirit would have been able to produce’.23 In putting his Eucharistic collection together, Laghi favoured a straightforward approach to both language and organisation with a single miracle story typically occupying one quarto page. The large volume of stories in his work offered a rich selection to readers. Silvano Razzi wrote in detail as to how and why he ensured that his book was appropriate for Catholics with limited literacy. He reasoned that if scholars and the learned can at their pleasure, in addition to a thousand other things, see these things in the Greek and Latin writers, especially in the lives of the saints and in different histories, then why should poor, naïve people be deprived?24 Razzi wanted to address what he saw as the needs of those with limited literacy and emphasized the role that his collection could play in providing devout Catholics with access to the spiritual benefits of miracle stories. For Razzi, his work offered a much more likely avenue for spiritual growth for literate Catholics than the options better suited to scholars. Particularly striking is the differentiation Razzi made between his collection and hagiographies and histories which were other genres of miracle-related print. For him, a book solely concerned with narrating miracle stories in an accessible language offered something specific to readers in relation to other works available to a Catholic readership. The clerical authors framed their books, and the stories within, as particularly efficacious vehicles for messages that would touch Catholic hearts and transform interior devotional lives. Turning now to the narratives themselves, I focus on understanding their attempts to influence specific spheres of Catholic devotional life. 21 ‘legge volentieri, per accendersi à maggiore divotione’. Razzi, Miracoli della Vergine Maria, 2. ‘Semplicemente à Dio’. Razzi, Miracoli della Vergine Maria, 2. 23 ‘questa mia compositione non sia accompagnata da quella bella facondia, & ornate parole, che altro spirito svelto havrebbe potuto fare’. Laghi, I miracoli del Santissimo Sacramento, b2. 24 ‘se i sciētiati, e dotti possono a lor piacere, oltre à mille altre cose, vedere questi ne i greci, e latini scrittori; e specialmēte ne’ libri delle vite de’ Santi, & in diverse historie, perche deono le povere persone idiote, esserne prive?’. Razzi, Miracoli della Vergine Maria, 3. 22 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Nourishing Catholic souls Joshua Rushton PRAYER LIFE Prayer was an essential component to miracle narratives that dealt with moments of crisis. The underlying message was a simple one: God was attentive to the pleas of suffering Catholics and could be quick to respond. Yet, postTridentine miracle narratives also aimed to shape their readers’ approach to their prayer lives in far more subtle ways with stories that dealt with everyday devotional prayers. Lehner has argued that the period of Catholic reform offered both clerical and lay believers new and renewed methods for achieving spiritual betterment through prayer. These methods were both promoted and adopted by prominent figures such as Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556), Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) and François de Sales (1567–1622).25 Notwithstanding the importance of devotional works which taught meditative and contemplative techniques related to prayer, miracle narratives did not work in the same way. Broader approaches rather than detailed methods were the focus of miracle stories concerned with shaping the prayer lives of their readers. The miracles examined here were not invoked in the way they often were in cases of emergency. The Catholic actors at the centre of these stories proceeded to happily pray away until a spontaneous miracle drew attention to the agreeableness or otherwise of their piety. Given its spiritual focus, the 1591 Rosary collection dealt with the relationship between prayer and the miraculous robustly. In addition to prayers concerned with healing, liberation, or protection from harm, this collection also aimed to communicate messages about how Catholic people should approach their prayer lives in a spiritual sense. The dimensions of early modern Catholic prayer that gave tangible form to exterior practices have been emphasized by recent studies of religious materiality.26 Miracle narratives that dealt with prayer warned that such outward manifestations of piety – fidgeting with rosary beads, kneeling before statutes, or reciting verses – had to be backed up by an appropriate state of interior engagement to be pleasing to God. The Rosary collection contains a story which warned readers that declining holiness had consequences for prayer life. Readers were told of a Catholic mother’s hard work in raising her son in piety being scuppered by her untimely death. Upon the death of his mother, who nurtured her son’s ardent devotion, the youth was ‘tricked by wicked company, spoiled, and became tangled up in carnal lusts’.27 The youth retained his outward devotion to the Virgin Mary, but 25 Lehner, The Inner Life of Catholic Reform, 110–27. Mary Laven and Irene Galandra Cooper, ‘The Material Culture of Piety in the Italian Renaissance: Retouching the Rosary’, in The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Catherine Richardson, Tara Hamling, and David Gaimster (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 338–53; Katherine Tycz, ‘Material Prayers and Maternity in Early Modern Italy: Signed, Sealed, Delivered’, in Domestic Devotions in Early Modern Italy, ed. by Maya Corry, Marco Faini, and Alessia Meneghin (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 244–71. 27 ‘Ingannato da cattivi compagnia fu vitiato & intricato nelle lascivie carnali’. Anonymous, Miracoli della Sacratissima Vergine Maria, fol. 11v. 26 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 8 9 the spiritual heft behind it was gone. The story goes on to explain that on his way to eat with his companions, the youth stopped at a Marian image to say some of his Rosary. The Virgin Mary responded suddenly and miraculously through her image and offered her devotee an ugly looking bowl which was filled with delicious food. The youth approached the food but queried the manner in which it was served: ‘Madonna, I would willingly eat it, but this bowl is so ugly that it has entirely taken away my appetite’.28 To illuminate the meaning behind a curious offering, the Madonna replied: ‘My son, you know that those things that you offer to me with the Rosary are great, but fetid and filthy is the heart with which you offer them’.29 Recognising the need for Mary’s miraculous intervention, the youth renounced his sinful life and resumed a pious one seeking to craft a more appropriate vessel for his renewed devotion. The miracle of the ugly bowl was not a provision narrative in the sense that a literal material need was met by food. Instead, the point of the story was to highlight the error of going through the motions of devotion without applying a willing, engaged and suitably holy heart. The same collection reminded its readership that not only rambunctious young laymen needed help, but also Catholics who ought to know better could be on the receiving end of a miraculous rebuke if their interior states of holiness were lacking. In this narrative, the anonymous compiler told of a nun who had always prayed ‘with great attention’.30 Similar to the young man in the previous story, the nun’s devotion had lapsed over time, slowly, unconsciously, but enough to make her devotions grow cold and disengaged from whom they were directed. Eventually, the nun had taken to saying the Rosary ‘with a distracted mind, with a wandering heart, in great rush and hastily’.31 Like the previous miracle, the apparition which helped to reignite the nun’s devotional passion was not invoked by her. Indeed, she seemed ignorant of the fact that her prayers had lost the spiritual engagement that made fingering rosary beads more than keeping her hands busy. The Virgin Mary appeared to the nun and quite simply said ‘you say my Rosary and you do not do what I tell you, because your heart is not in it, as it used to be’.32 Upon receiving the disappointing appraisal of her prayer life, the nun revaluated her devotion, and restored the interior engagement to her outward devotion. In contrast to prayer gone wrong, miracle narratives also used cases of exemplary devotion to communicate their messages on the ideal approach. 28 ‘Madonna volentieri lo mangiarei: ma la scudella è tanto brutta, che la mi toglie tutto lo appetito’. Ibid., fol. 11r. 29 ‘Et Maria disse sappi figliuolo mio che quelle cose, che tu mi offerisci del Rosario sono ottime: ma il tuo cuore è troppo fetido, e puzzolente col quale tu me lo offerisci’. Ibid., fol. 11r. 30 ‘cō grā atētione’. Ibid., fol. 11r. 31 ‘col cuore vagabōdo; & in molto fretta, & festinātemente’. Ibid., fol. 11r. 32 ‘tu dici il mio Rosario, e nō fai quello, che ti dica, imperoche il tuo cuore nō è in te; come soleva essere’. Ibid., fol. 11r. 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Nourishing Catholic souls Joshua Rushton A striking example, also drawn from the 1591 work, emphasized the devotion that a Spanish woman held for the Virgin Mary and the Rosary. It so happened that a man who was both teacher of theology and a preacher came to the woman’s hometown. Seeking to nourish her spiritual life further, the pious woman sought out the preacher asking how she could grow in her faith. The preacher’s response focused on the importance of holy deeds: honouring her marriage, raising her children to fear God, the giving of alms, and the avoidance of frivolity. The woman replied that she attended to such acts already and wanted to deepen her prayer life and thus explained to the preacher how she customarily went about doing so. This part of the narrative focused on the power that an engaged interior state had when it came to pleasing and efficacious devotional prayer. The pious woman explained that when praying the Rosary ‘I place the Virgin Mary before the eyes of my mind […]. And by doing this, I feel myself being given by the Virgin Mary a sweetness in my members which surpasses every human gentleness and every pleasure of the world’.33 When it turned to shifting her devotional gaze onto Christ, the woman explained that ‘I yearn entirely for compassion and love of Christ so much that the whole world seems to me to be pain’.34 Upon listening to the woman’s description of her approach to prayer, the preacher and theologian declared that ‘in twenty years I have already seen and heard many miraculous things. But know that from now on, you will be in my favour, and I want to be your disciple’.35 The inversion of the normal relationship between cleric and layperson was likely not lost on potential lay readers. The author of the text did not seek to encourage the lay reader to subvert the norms of spiritual instruction. The reversal of clerical-lay spiritual authority in this narrative emphasized the sheer power of the woman’s fervent devotion and gave readers an ideal to strive for in their own approaches to prayer. The authors of these books emphasized that their works were consciously constructed to provide straightforward messages to their readers about the power of the miraculous. The authors of miracle collections wanted to impart something specific about prayer, but they were not concerned with teaching meditative and spiritual techniques. Instead, miracle narratives encouraged their readers to be aware of approaches to their prayer lives in a more general sense. The examples examined above demonstrate that the ideal approach to prayer was one which ensured that exterior devotional actions were in harmony with an appropriate state of interior engagement, especially in terms of a holy heart. The messages about prayer that these stories sought to convey 33 ‘io propongo Maria Vergine innanzia gli occhi della mente mia […]. E facendo in questo modo, sento essermi data una dolcezza nelli membri miei dalla Vergine Maria, la qual supera ogni humana suavità, e delettatione del mondo’. Ibid., fol. 7r. 34 ‘Et mi struggo tutta per compassione & amore di Christo, in tanto che tutto il mondo mi pare essere pena’. Ibid., fol. 7v. 35 ‘udito molte mirabili cose. Ma sappi che da quì innanzi tu sarai nella gratia mia: & io voglio’esser tuo discepolo’. Ibid., fol. 7v. 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 10 11 were delivered through potentially relatable and emotive scenarios. These works possessed a didactic dimension, but their informative qualities related to narrative rather than technique. SIN AND SALVATION The uncertain status of the Catholic soul was the focus of several narratives collected in post-Tridentine miracle collections. Many of these tales told of Catholic people who were forced to examine the state of their own souls to achieve salvation. Moshe Sluhovsky has shown that post-Tridentine spiritual guides, especially those produced by Jesuit writers, sought to ‘instruct others in spiritual practices, including the examination of conscience’ – a practice related to but distinct from sacramental confession.36 Scholars of Italian Catholicism have argued that post-Tridentine emphasis on confession, conscience, and inner-scrutiny were amongst the priorities of reforming Church authorities in relation to the religious lives of the laity.37 Italian miracle collections also encouraged their readers to examine the states of their souls, yet, unlike the printed spiritual guides examined by Sluhovsky, these stories were not attempting to impart knowledge of appropriate penitential practices. Instead, they used simple narratives to encourage readers to reflect upon the great matters of sin, salvation and the Catholic soul in a ‘big picture’ sense. A recurring trope in these narratives is the forestalling of death until the proper sacraments can be administered. An example which demonstrates the prioritisation of the health of the immortal soul over the body comes from the 1591 Rosary collection. In this story, a girl is making way to visit a friend when she is suddenly set upon by wolves. She clutches her rosary and makes a plea to the Virgin Mary but is nonetheless subjected to a brutal mauling by the animals which rip open her stomach and devour her innards. The Virgin Mary did not respond by striking the wolves down, nor did she supernaturally reverse the mortal wounds inflicted upon her devotee. Instead, the Virgin forestalled the young girl’s death until she could make a confession and receive communion. After doing so, the girl’s soul was conducted to Heaven.38 Children in danger was a common trope in medieval and early modern Catholic miracle narratives.39 In the example above, however, it is the child’s immortal soul rather than mortal body which was preserved by the miraculous intervention of the Virgin Mary. The message this story aimed to communicate to its readers was, while 36 Sluhovsky, Becoming a New Self, 132. Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza: Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Turin: Einaudi, 1996); Wietse de Boer, The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter-Reformation Milan (Leiden: Brill, 2000). 38 Anonymous, Miracoli della Sacratissima Vergine Maria, fol. 6r. 39 See Ronald C. Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents: Endangered Children in Medieval Miracles (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). 37 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Nourishing Catholic souls Joshua Rushton physical health might have been at the fore of their minds, the salvation of the soul was really the priority. Silvano Razzi’s 1587 Marian miracle collection contains a similar story which foregrounded the body–soul hierarchy when it came to the outcome of the miracle. In this tale, the soul of a Catholic man at risk of dying in a state of mortal sin was harassed by demons determined to drag it to hell. Their efforts were scuppered by the Virgin Mary who appeared and cried out ‘I command you, by the dread of judgement, that you return that soul to the body’.40 The demons’ ferocity was tempered by the Virgin’s command, thus allowing the man to repent his mortal sin and die in a state of secure salvation. Silvano Razzi included several examples of this type of miracle in his collection. In these tales, death is framed in terms of the matter of salvation. Devotional and sacramental culture are key to these miracles, as was the inner devotion of the Catholic whose soul is in peril. In these miracles, the body is not saved, but through divine intervention, Catholics received salvation for their immortal souls. The salvation-related miracles analysed here affirmed key aspects of Catholic soteriology, especially the importance of receiving the necessary sacraments before dying. David D’Andrea has argued that miracle stories related to souls in Purgatory in Italian collections provided proof which rebutted the theological challenges of the Protestant Reformation.41 The polemical value of the miraculous notwithstanding, the Catholic readers of these miracle narratives probably did not doubt the reality of Purgatory, Hell, or Heaven. Instead, these stories were mainly concerned with reorientating the Catholic reader to the heavy, but fundamental issues of sin, salvation, and their souls. These stories may have dealt with the great soteriological matter, but they also offered readers straightforward examples of what they needed to bring to the table, so to speak, to ensure the salvation of their own souls. Salvation miracles captured the drama accompanying the end of life in various situations. In one, Razzi tells of a thief condemned to die. Despite his disregard for the law, the thief maintained a simple devotion to the Virgin Mary which caused her to appear to him the evening before his execution. Mary told her wayward devotee that ‘I have prayed to my son for you with the end that you will convert from your sins, and that he gives you the grace that before your death he will empower you to speak five words which will free you from your sins’.42 At the moment before his execution, the condemned 40 ‘io vi commando, per lo tremendo di del giudicio, che voi riduciate quell’anima al corpo’. Razzi, Miracoli della gloriosa Vergine Maria, 50. 41 David D’Andrea, ‘Miracles: An Inconvenient Truth’, in A Linking of Heaven and Earth: Studies in Religious and Cultural History in Honour of Carlos M.N Eire, ed. by Emily Michelson, Scott K. Taylor, and Mary Noll Venables (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 78–9. 42 ‘ho pregato il figliuolo mio per te a fine, che ti converta da tuoi peccati: & egli ti ha fatto questa gratia, che innanzi alla tua morte ti darà potere parlare cinque parole, le quali da i tuoi peccati ti libereanno’. Razzi, Miracoli della gloriosa Vergine Maria, 135. 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 12 13 Another example following shortly after focussed on the miraculous salvation of a female sinner. The narrative explained that the only good thing the woman did in her whole life was say a ‘Hail Mary’ to a Marian statute each day as she passed it. As in the case of the condemned thief, this simple devotion was enough to attract heaven’s gaze when the woman came to the end of her life. She too was overcome by contrition as the Devil’s agents were ready to pluck her soul from her body and conduct it to hell. The woman cried out ‘Lady, Queen, and Our Sweet Mother, still I have done no good, nevertheless I am confident in your mercy, and I commend my spirit to you’.44 The words were said ‘with the greatest affection, and with much faith’ causing the demons to flee, denied the soul of the sinful woman.45 In both of the salvation miracles, devotion was not absent in either the lives of the thief or the sinful woman. In fact, it was the glimmer of faith that punctuated consistent patterns of sin that served as the ‘credit’ needed to get the attention of the Virgin Mary. The miracle of salvation, however, could not occur until these devotions became empowered by affection. In both cases, the miraculous intervention only took place following contrition and the greatest devotion that was not simply performed but felt in the spiritual affections of the Catholic heart. The miracles examined above dealt with the extremity of death. They were cautionary tales, and the spiritual messages that they emphasized were bolstered by the almost panicked sense of urgency which accompanied deathbed salvation narratives. The examples of miracles dealing with in extremis interventions were not, however, telling Catholics to wait until the eleventh hour before tending to the state of their souls. After all, miracle stories concerning the inner dimension of devotion were supposed to be practical tools to be used in Catholic life. The centrality of confession to these stories aligned with the Tridentine Church’s own emphasis on the importance of the sacrament. As Sluhovsky has shown, spiritual literature produced in this period encouraged clerical and lay Catholics alike to engage in processes of self-examination to achieve spiritual betterment. Miracle narratives spoke also to the complexity of human nature and the inevitability of efforts of devotion co-existing with patterns of sin. The narratives of the sinful woman and the penitent thief were 43 ‘gli diede il Signore Dio una gran contritione, e dolore inestimabile, e pentimēto de’ suoi peccati. Nella quale contritione, disse con grandissimo divotione, e cō molto affetto di cuore le cinque parole del Publicano Evāgelico, ‘Deus propitius esto mihi peccatori’. Per le quali fu subito riconciliato con Dio, e così salvo’. Ibid., 136. 44 ‘Signora, Reina, e Madre, nostra dolcissima, anchor che io non habbia fatto mai alcun bene, nondimeno molto confiso nella vostra misericordia, e vi raccomando lo spirito mio’. Ibid., 160. 45 ‘e dette queste parole […] con grandissimo affetto, & con molta fede’. Ibid., 160. 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Nourishing Catholic souls gave to God great contrition, and inestimable sorrow and penance for his sins. In that contrition, he said with great devotion, and with much affection of the heart the five words […] “God be merciful to me a sinner.” For this, he was soon reconciled from God and so, received salvation.43 Joshua Rushton indeed concerned with last-moment remission of sin, but they also spoke to the power that devotion in life, however simple, had to attract Heaven’s eye and ensure the salvation of the soul after death. Catholic bodies were not saved in these stories, but the salvation of immortal souls left readers with satisfying endings. EUCHARISTIC PIETY Niccolò Laghi’s collection of Eucharistic miracles was one manifestation of the post-Tridentine emphasis on both the doctrine of ‘real presence’ and lay participation in communion.46 Indeed, Laghi suggested that his book would be especially relevant for laypeople who were members of the Confraternities of the Holy Sacrament which were highly visible in Italian devotional life.47 Wonders worked through the bread and wine of the Mass were a mainstay of Catholic miracle culture.48 Of the three authors examined in this article, Laghi most explicitly engaged with the challenges that the Protestant Reformation posed to the unity of Catholic Christianity. At the beginning of his work, he summarized numerous heretical positions on the Eucharist forwarded by heresiarchs from the Prophet Muhammad to Martin Luther. Many of the miracles that Laghi selected for his compilation took advantage of the reactionary, propagandistic potential of the miraculous to support Catholic culture. Numerous stories told of boisterous Protestants choking on their breakfast eggs, being pestered by spiders, losing limbs, or being simply struck dumb through the power of Eucharistic miracles. Laghi’s book also contained stories dedicated entirely to devout Catholics and their devotional engagement with the Eucharist without heresy being key. The Eucharist was a symbol of Catholic unity and community.49 Nonetheless, several of the narratives collected by Laghi focussed instead upon the relationship between the individual believer and the body of Christ. In one example in a 1597 edition of Laghi’s work, we read of a Catholic who, following a quarrel with a neighbour, ‘thought that they 46 Lehner, The Inner Life of Catholic Reform, 88–94. On the history of the promotion of frequent communion, see Joseph Dougherty, From Altar-Throne to Table: The Campaign for Frequent Holy Communion in the Catholic Church (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2010). 47 On the Confraternities of the Holy Sacrament in Italy, see Danilo Zardin, ‘A Single Body: Eucharistic Piety and Confraternities of the Body of Christ in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Texts, Images, and Devotion’, in A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Confraternities, ed. by Konrad Eisenbichler (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 109–32. 48 See Charles Caspers and Peter Jan Margry, The Miracle of Amsterdam: Biography of a Contested Devotion (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019). On the ideas underpinning Eucharistic miracles, see Steven Justice, ‘Eucharistic Miracle and Eucharistic Doubt’, The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 42 (2012), 307–32. 49 See John Bossy’s early but still influential conceptualisation in his ‘The Mass as a Social Institution 1200– 1700’, Past and Present, 100 (1983), 29–61. 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 14 15 reconciled externally, however, but also felt resentment on the inside’.50 The problem at hand was quickly brought to the man’s attention through a miraculous bitterness which was perceived in his mouth. Understanding the meaning, he made more robust efforts of reconciliation to ensure that his internal state was suitable for participation in communion. The miracle condensed the core truth of a longstanding belief regarding Eucharistic devotion which prohibited participation in states of sin or inner conflict when it came to preparing for communion. This principle, however, was reiterated during the thirteenth session of Trent (1551) through the reminder that ‘no one conscious of himself of mortal sin […] ought to receive that sacred Eucharist’.51 Here, the importance of the Tridentine decree regarding receiving the Eucharist while harbouring conflict was the core message of the short miracle narrative. In the case of the miracle of bitterness, the humdrum nature of the issue at hand, falling out with one’s neighbour, offered a straightforward story that most Catholic readers were likely to identify with at some point in their own lives. The narrative was also very short, consisting of just a few sentences. Brevity in this case reflects the ability of miracle narratives to communicate core messages with minimal fuss. As is the case with other collections, the narratives in Laghi’s work provided exemplars of ideal devotion as well as cautionary tales. In one case, a bishop at the end of his life lay bedbound. At the mere sight of the Eucharist, brought to him as viaticum, he gained the strength to cry out a prayer and commend his soul to God. The quiet which overtook the bishop was taken for a miracle. The narrative explained that onlookers were astonished by ‘the devotion he had for the Most Holy Body of Christ […] that exterior deeds demonstrate the interior affection’.52 As with the example above, the narrative of the bishop simply outlined the ideal interaction between the interior and exterior when a Catholic approached the Eucharist. In fact, interiority was an issue that Laghi dealt with on multiple occasions throughout his work. He was intentional when it came to providing Catholic readership with miracle narratives that focused on the value of the Eucharist for their interior devotional lives. Laghi dedicated an entire section of his work to short narratives, comprised of two or three sentences in most cases, that captured the miraculous feeling that accompanied partaking in the Eucharist. These stories exhibit a consistency in the framing of Eucharistic devotion as something which engaged the souls and inner faculties of recipients in a palpable way. The first case compiled by Laghi focussed on Blessed John of Alvernia (1259-1322). The 50 ‘se bene s’erano pacificati esteriormente, si sentiva però nell’interiore anche rancore’. Laghi, I miracoli del Santissimo Sacramento, 342. 51 Schroeder, The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 77. 52 ‘la divotione c’havea al sacratissimo corpo di Christo […] che gli atti esteriori dimostrassero l’affetto interiore’. Laghi, I miracoli del Santissimo Sacramento, 163. 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Nourishing Catholic souls Joshua Rushton description told that upon receiving communion, the Blessed John ‘lost his senses in such a way as if his entire soul for that high mystery liquified’.53 In another case, Saint Elzèar of Sabran, Count of Ariano and tertiary of the Franciscan Order (1285–1323), took communion and ‘felt in his mouth a perfect sweetness over every other liquor’.54 In other cases, the miraculous sweetness both tasted and felt by communicants overwhelmed the body. A case in point is the entry on an unnamed priest who upon receiving the sacrament ‘felt in his mouth, and his entire body an incomparable sweetness’.55 The encounter was ineffable as ‘he would never be able to express it, nor assess it with the intellect’ as the miracle could only be experienced through inner spiritual means.56 The miraculous sweetness contented recipients, as in the case of third-century Saint Christina who upon ingesting the host ‘felt great sweet taste, that the body took great strength, and the soul miraculous happiness’.57 These examples focused on the spirituality of beatified and canonized individuals, but less exalted people also featured in the chapter. A more capacious example focused on a soldier named Boaro [who] did not listen to the preachers but the charlatans […] and all his practice was with people of bad customs. […] he took communion and his soul softened in devotion […] that he tasted an unusual sweetness […] which made the delicate flavour grow much more, in such a manner that he did not know what to compare such a sweetness.58 Deploying miracle narratives to answer the taunts of Protestant critics was indeed one aim of Niccolò Laghi’s Eucharistic miracle collection. His work was not, however, a straightforward polemical piece. Rather, the book sought to meet diverse spiritual objectives in relation to the Eucharist which remained at the very centre of Catholic worship in this period. One of these objectives was to use the culture of the miraculous to encourage readers to adopt personal relationships with the body of Christ. CONCLUSION By concentrating on non-healing miracle narratives, this article has demonstrated that the culture of the miraculous could play an important role in 53 ‘che gli mancarono i sensi in modo tale, come se la sua anima in tutto per quello si alto misterio si liquefacese’. Ibid., 220. 54 ‘si sentiva nella proprio bocca una soavità perfettissima sopra ogn’altro licore’. Ibid., 221. 55 ‘si sentisse in bocca, e’n tutto l’corpo una incomparabile dolcezza’. Ibid., 222. 56 ‘no’l havrebbe potuto mai isprimere, ne col’intelletto stimar’. Ibid., 222. 57 ‘sentiva tanto soave gusto, che’l corpo ne pigliava gran forza, & l’anima mirabil allegrezza’. Ibid., 222. 58 ‘un soldato nomato Boaro […] non udiva i predicatori, mà i ciarlatani […] & tutta la sua prattica era con persone mal costumate […] si communicò, & talmente gl’intenerì l’animo nella divotione […] che si communicà sentì una dolcezza insolita […] il che facendo tanto più crescevale il delicato sapore, di maniera che non sapea a che paragonare una tale soavità’. Ibid., 222–3. 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 16 17 nourishing Catholic souls. Despite dealing with different spiritual principles, the texts examined throughout exhibited a striking degree of consistency in the messages that they communicated about the importance of miracles for shaping interior devotional life. In putting forward this argument, I have provided a new dimension to scholarship which emphasizes the role of early modern Catholic miracle culture in resolving earthly suffering. Non-healing miracles that encouraged Catholics to pray earnestly, take the bread as flesh, and seriously think about their salvation aligned with the doctrinal priorities of the reforming Catholic Church. The promotion of these priorities through miracle stories reasserted their sacred efficacy and reminded readers that close engagement with them was a hallmark of being a good Catholic. The Church needed to strike a delicate balance between suggesting that the holy could manifest in everyday life and avoiding the excesses which attracted scorn and scepticism on all confessional fronts. This article has highlighted the subtle but profound ways that clerical writers harnessed non-healing miracle narratives to remind the faithful of God’s attentiveness to matters of the soul. While the potential readership of miracle collections might not have expected to encounter comparable signs and wonders on the daily, narratives such as those examined here assured them of the possibility of such sacred interventions in fundamental areas of devotional life. I have drawn attention to some of the spiritual priorities communicated through non-healing miracles in the Italian context characterized by both stable Catholic hegemony and vibrant devotional renewal in the early modern period. This article therefore encourages more systematic thought about this diverse category of miracles. Further research on other regions, such as those characterized by confessional divide or minority Catholicism, for example, will be especially important for understanding the creative uses to which the culture of the miraculous was put to in Catholic life in this period of reform and renewal. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This article is based on doctoral research funded by the AHRC through the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities. I am grateful to Alex Bamji, Iona McCleery, and John Gallagher who read and commented on several drafts of this article. I also wish to thank audiences at the 2021 Reformation Studies Colloquium (Birmingham) and the 2023 The World of Printed Prayers conference (Galway), where I presented earlier versions of this research, for their insightful questions. Finally, I am extremely grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on this article. University of Leeds 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Nourishing Catholic souls 14774658, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12943 by Test, Wiley Online Library on [27/05/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 18 Abstract The period of Catholic reform witnessed the proliferation of printed works that narrated historical and contemporary miracles for the edification of a vernacular readership. This article examines the role of printed miracle narratives in stimulating interior Catholic devotional life through close examination of three Italian vernacular collections printed in Italy between 1587 and 1597. Previous studies have focused on miracle stories where the resolution or prevention of earthly suffering in the forms of illness, miscarriages of justice, or accidents was the main event. Such narratives were designed to shape their readers’ understanding of the culture of the miraculous and its relevance for their lives. This article takes a different approach to the role of the miraculous in early modern Catholicism by bringing narratives that had spiritual rather than physical outcomes to the centre of study. By bringing into focus the diversity of narratives compiled in miracle collections, it argues that stories also provided readers with opportunities to examine and tend to the state of their interior religious lives. This article offers a fresh perspective on the messages that early modern Catholics received about the value of the miraculous for their lives.