They Flew: A History of the Impossible (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780300259803)

An award-winning historian's examination of impossible events at the dawn of modernity and of their enduring significance

"Historically rich and superbly written."--David J. Davis, Wall Street Journal

Accounts of seemingly impossible phenomena abounded in the early modern era--tales of levitation, bilocation, and witchcraft--even as skepticism, atheism, and empirical science were starting to supplant religious belief in the paranormal. In this book, Carlos Eire explores how a culture increasingly devoted to scientific thinking grappled with events deemed impossible by its leading intellectuals.

Eire observes how levitating saints and flying witches were as essential a component of early modern life as the religious turmoil of the age, and as much a part of history as Newton's scientific discoveries. Relying on an array of firsthand accounts, and focusing on exceptionally impossible cases involving levitation, bilocation, witchcraft, and demonic possession, Eire challenges established assumptions about the redrawing of boundaries between the natural and supernatural that marked the transition to modernity.

Using as his case studies stories about St. Teresa of Avila, St. Joseph of Cupertino, the Venerable Mar? de ﾁgreda, and three disgraced nuns, Eire challenges readers to imagine a world animated by a different understanding of reality and of the supernatural's relationship with the natural world. The questions he explores--such as why and how "impossibility" is determined by cultural contexts, and whether there is more to reality than meets the eye or can be observed by science--have resonance and lessons for our time.

Author: Carlos M. N. Eire
ISBN-10: 0300259808
ISBN-13: 9780300259803
Publisher: Yale University Press
Language: English
Published: 09/26/2023
Pages: 512
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.96lbs
Size: 9.48h x 6.56w x 1.32d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 10/02/2023