ABSTRACT
The tradition of saintly tongues in the Roman Catholic Church was carried on in the early nineteenth century by Katherine Emerick, ‘the Nun of Dulmer’, an ecstatic, who often spoke in trance in a strange and beautiful language. Irvingites, Mormons, revivals in Europe, movements in the Orthodox Church and among Armenians, all produced glossalalia, overlapping and coming on stage one after the other like actors pat upon their cues. While ‘the inspired brethren of Port-Glasgow holding religious conversaziones in language which nobody understood’ the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was coming into existence in America. Irving also asserted that Hebrew, Greek, Spanish, Italian and other unidentified languages were spoken by persons who did not know them, but his claim is entirely unsupported by evidence. The language appeared ‘when Frederica Hauffe spirit was in intimate conjunction with her soul’ - whatever that may mean.
