The feast of St. Walburga,
abbess, draws near (Feb. 25). Rereading the section of John Henry Newman’s The Lives of the English Saints that
pertains to her, I googled “saints who were unguentiferous”, referring to those
whose bones exude some type of oil or liquid, as hers do.
I was unaware of the
ferocious response Dr. Charles Kingsley made to Newman in 1864 concerning this
very work. Newman had compiled stories of saints’ lives “written by various
hands.”
Dr. Kingsley did not object when the accounts were “treated openly as
legends and myths”, but found them “dangerous enough, when they stand side by
side with stories told in earnest, like that of St. Walburga.” He considered
the stories of miracles attributed to Walburg’s oil “sheer Popery, sapping the
very foundation of historic truth” and “stuff and nonsense…I really must
recollect that my readers and I are living in the nineteenth century.”
From the perspective of the
twenty-first century, I have to say I rather enjoyed reading the several pages
of Dr. Kingsley’s outrage. Newman’s Apologia
Pro Vita Sua was his eloquent reply to Dr. Charles Kingsley.
Are the miracles associated
with St. Walburg and other saints mere myths and legends? The Lives of the English Saints recounts for us their charity and human
kindness, that mercy which flows from love for their brothers and sisters, a
“healing stream of compassion.” The miracle of the work of mercy brings a
healing that no one can dispute.
Sr. Christa Kreinbrink, OSB
