In the early Church, there were no scientific inquiries into the events in question. Not only were there no brain-wave monitors or video cameras to track eye movement during supposed visions or tests to determine whether the blood or tears on a weeping statue were human, no formal investigation of any sort was universally required in the discernment of the miraculous claims. As part of the process, the faithful might gather to pray at the site, and the parish priest, or even better, a bishop could be involved, but it wasn’t the norm. Trustworthy testimony and a miracle were typically the main elements that built a case for visions or other events to be accepted as authentic. In a form of popular approval throughout Europe, shrines arose, including the Slipper Chapel in Walsingham, England, where Catholics and Anglicans alike commemorate the apparitions experienced by a noblewoman in 1061, and, as was mentioned earlier, Our Lady of the Pilar Basilica in Spain, legendarily the site of history’s first Marian apparition experienced by St. James in A.D. 40 while Mary was still alive.
It is not uncommon in early stories of miraculous visions or holy images for a formula to be present in one of several variations: Our Lady appears to one or more people (or a miraculous statue is discovered), she requests that the visionary tells the town to return to a life of practicing the Faith, a miracle (most typically healing) is given to prove the authenticity of the Virgin’s presence, and finally she requests that a shrine be built in commemoration. The location of the requested shrine is often indicated symbolically — the collected statue might miraculously return overnight three times to the spot where it was discovered. This was the case in the foundational legend of the Santuario de Chimayó in New Mexico, known as the Lourdes of the Southwest and home to the healing dirt that has been a part of thousands of cures. The location for the shrine was chosen because a supernatural light was said to have shone on a crucifix that was unearthed and taken to the local parish church some miles away. Three times it miraculously returned to its original discovery spot, giving the faithful confidence to build a shrine there.
In other such legends, the image became so heavy that it could not be moved. In the year 641, villagers of Soviore, Italy, buried their statue of the Madonna and fled toward the Mediterranean escaping the advancing Lombard hordes. A hundred years later, on July 7, 740, the parish priest was hunting at dawn, when he noticed a dove fly into a hole. Unsuccessful at uncovering the spot, he returned the next day with three helpers with shovels, and they unearthed a wooden statue. When the priest tried to carry it home, it was too heavy to move, so he left it there. On the following day, people found that the statue had moved to the top of a nearby chestnut tree. When it repeatedly returned after being moved, the villagers built a chapel at that spot.
The most famous legend of a weight-gaining holy icon is that of the wonder-working Polish image of Our Lady of Czestochowa. Hussite raiders looted the castle where the icon was housed, but during the getaway the image became so heavy that the horses could no longer drag the cart carrying the goods. The thieves removed the image and slashed it with a sword in frustration before tossing the icon into a ravine. The iconic scar present in every reproduction of the Black Madonna of Jasna Gora faithfully reproduces the scar on the face of the original image. Eventually, however, miracles and revelations perhaps intended for the universal Church were no longer evaluated by a parish priest or a community of the faithful, and more standard guidelines were drawn up. The revelations accorded to mystic St. Birgitta (Bridget) of Sweden were considered at the Councils of Constance (1414–1418) and Basel (1431–1449). She had received in ecstasy hundreds of infused locutions relating to a wide range of topics, including tips for everyday living, calls for reform in the Church and in Sweden, and even the Crusades. She dictated her messages in Swedish to two spiritual directors and a bishop, who recorded them in Latin. Because of her high profile and contact with the popes on political matters, her revelations were treated with special care and attention.24
The proliferation of alleged messages from myriad seers inspired greater Church involvement in discerning the words of mystics. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the faithful were growing anxious over the increase in itinerant prophets with messages of doom.25 The Fifth Lateran Council (1512–1517), called by Pope Julius, reserved the approval of new prophecies and revelations to the Holy See. Following the explosive and scandalous exposing as a demonic fraud the famed Spanish mystic Sr. Magdalena de la Cruz in 1544, the Council of Trent sought to return investigations to the local level and authorized bishops to investigate and approve such phenomena before public worship could take place.
As established in the Council of Trent, the local bishop is the first and main authority in apparition cases, which can be defined as instances of private revelation. From the twenty-fifth session of the Council of Trent:
And that these things may be the more faithfully observed, the holy Synod ordains, that no one be allowed to place, or cause to be placed, any unusual image, in any place, or church, howsoever exempted, except that image have been approved of by the bishop: also, that no new miracles are to be acknowledged, or new relics recognized, unless the said bishop has taken cognizance and approved thereof; who, as soon as he has obtained some certain information in regard to these matters, shall, after having taken the advice of theologians, and of other pious men, act therein as he shall judge to be consonant with truth and piety. But if any doubtful, or difficult abuse has to be extirpated; or, in fine, if any more grave question shall arise touching these matters, the bishop, before deciding the controversy, shall await the sentence of the metropolitan and of the bishops of the province, in a provincial Council; yet so, that nothing new, or that previously has not been usual in the Church, shall be resolved on, without having first consulted the most holy Roman Pontiff.26
In the decades following the council, the Church became increasingly vigilant about protecting the faithful against alleged private revelation and, in general, against the expression of ideas deemed dangerous. With the development and popularity of the printing press, many anti-Catholic documents and reformed versions of the Bible became widely available. The Catholic Church sought to protect the faithful from publications deemed heretical, anti-clerical, or lascivious and created a list known as the Index of Forbidden Books (Index Librorum Prohibitorum) in 1559. In addition to books deemed dangerous in science and philosophy, writings on unapproved private revelation would make the list. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V established the Roman Inquisition (also known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition) and fourteen other congregations in the Roman Curia.
Prospero Lambertini (1675–1758), the future Benedict XIV, provided several rules for discernment of private revelations and the miracles needed for the canonization of saints in De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione in 1740. Such events must present themselves to human reason as being truly extraordinary and beyond the scope of natural causes. He answered the question of whether the incorruptible corpses of saints could be used as evidence of sainthood, insisting that the cases considered miraculous had to be bodies close to perfectly preserved over the course of many years.27
In the twentieth century, the Church continued its efforts to contain the wide dissemination of information on alleged phenomena and reinforced the bishop’s role as judge of the authenticity of private revelation. The Code of Canon Law of 1917 (canon 1399, no. 5) forbade the publication of anything about “new apparitions, revelations, visions, prophecies, and miracles” without the local bishop’s approbation. The local ordinary is to consult someone (known as the censor librorum) whom he considers competent to give the doctrinal content of the publication the stamp of nihil obstat (“nothing forbids”), at which point the local ordinary grants the mark of imprimatur (“let it be printed”).
On December 7, 1965, following Pope Paul VI’s motu proprio Integrae servandae reconstituting the Holy Office as the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and effectively dropping the Index of Forbidden Books from being overseen by any congregation, a CDF notification of June 14, 1966, published in the Vatican’s newspaper, L’Osservatore