Reader's Digest: March 30, 2024

I’ve been intrigued for a while by Carlos Eire’s new book, They Flew: A History of the Impossible, which “argues” that we should take medieval testimonies of miraculous flight and bodily bilocation more seriously than most of us do. He doesn’t just mean that we should respect the beliefs and experiences expressed in these reports, but that we should take them seriously as evidence of fact: “The assumed impossibility of [these] events deserves closer scrutiny,” Eire writes.

I’ve read a number of reviews, none of which convinced me to read the book. Erin Maglaque in the NYRB has convinced me not to—at least for now:

They flew. They flew! That is Carlos Eire’s claim, in this deeply unserious book. Salvador and Teresa; the idiot savant Joseph of Cupertino, patron saint of airplane travelers; Saint Francis of Assisi, who with flames of love pouring from his face and mouth lifted his friend Masseo up in the air with his breath, uttering “Ah! Ah! Ah!” These enchanted men and women rose to chur…