ABSTRACT
As we have seen, in canonization cases the canon lawyers, notaries, and theologians who were charged with determining the authenticity of miracles received a list of questions to which witnesses testifying under oath were asked to respond.1 All of the extant canonization reports are prefaced by such a formal list of questions covering the putative saint’s life, conduct, ministry, and faith; his/her public reputation; the cult surrounding his or her ministry; and miracles, both in life and posthumously. This ‘charge to the jury’ was refined in the course of the thirteenth century, and was intended to reduce the number of miracles confirmed by Rome only to those which were backed by full documentation and conformed to the standards for judging the miraculous. The following charge was issued by Pope Clement V in 1307, and was to guide the panel of investigators (which included the prominent theologian William Durand the Younger) appointed to look into the case of Thomas of Hereford:
The third article [of the inquiry] deals with the miracles of said lord Thomas; concerning which the witnesses were first to be asked, testifying why, how often, and how God had acted through him, or for his sake [pro eo], both in the course of his life and after his death. Second, if they testify about said miracles, they are to be asked the sources for their knowledge. Third, if said miracles occurred above [supra] or against [contra] nature. Fourth, what words were used by those who sought to have said miracles performed, and how they invoked God and said lord Thomas. Fifth, if in accomplishing said miracles, herbs, stones, and any other natural or medicinal materials were used; and if incantations or trickery [superstitiones] or forms of deceit [fraudes] were involved in the operation of said miracles. Sixth, if, after said miracles had been accomplished, due to these miracles faith or devotion had grown among
1 For an early protoptype, see Innocent IV’s letter of November 27, 1252 to the papal commissioners, in Rose of Viterbo, Giuseppe Abate (ed.), ‘S. Rosa da Viterbo, terziara francescana (1233-1251): Fonti storiche della vita e loro revisione critica’, Miscellanea francescana, 52 (1952), 126-7: ‘Testes legitimos, quos super vita, conversatione ac miraculis recolendae memoriae Rosae puellae Viterbiensis debetis recipere, prius ab eis prestito juramento, diligenter examinare curetis; et de omnibus quae dixerint interrogetis eosdem: quomodo sciunt, quo tempore, quo mense, quo die et quibus mense, quo die et quibus praesentibus, quo loco, ad cuius invocationem, quibus verbis interpositis; et de nominibus illorum, circa quos miracula facta dicuntur; et quot diebus antea eos viderant infirmos; et quanto tempore visi sunt sani; et quo loco sunt oriundi; et interrogetis de omnibus cicumstantiis diligenter; et circa singula capitula fiant, ut expedit, quaestiones praedictae; et sic series testimonii et verba testium fideliter redigantur in scriptis.’ See also the bull of Innocent IV initiating the inquiry into Clare of Assisi in Zefferino Lazzeri, ‘De processu canonizationis S. Clarae’, Archivum franciscanum historicum, 5 (1912), 645: ‘quo tempore, quo mense, quo die, et quibus prasentibus, quo loco, ad cuius invocationem et quibus verbis interpositisi, et de nominibus illorum circa quod miracula facta dicuntur’; see also ‘Documenta de B. odone Novariensi’, 323-54.
