They Flew

Carlos M. N. Eire is the T. L. Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University. He is the author of Waiting for Snow in Havana, winner of the National Book Award, and of War Against the Idols; A Very Brief History of Eternity; and Reformations. He lives in Guilford, CT.

“Historically rich and superbly written.”—David J. Davis, Wall Street Journal“They Flew, written in Eire’s familiar evocative, beguiling narrative manner, is in fact more revealing for what it does not say. His oblique style is famous.”—Jan Machielsen, Times Literary Supplement“[This] mischievous history of miracles during the early modern period pokes at our most basic assumptions about life, the universe, and everything.”—The Bulwark“Weird and wonderful. . . . [Eire’s] scholarship is rigorous.”—Christian Wiman, Harper’s Magazine“Eire is a master storyteller. . . . A spellbinding narrative reminiscent of the best works of Carlo Ginzburg and Natalie Zemon Davis. . . . [A] masterpiece of historical scholarship.”—Peter B. Kaufman, Los Angeles Review of Books“[A] compelling new book. . . . Eire makes a powerful case for taking [these stories] seriously, and considering them through the eyes of the society in which they happened.”—Katherine Harvey, Engelsberg Ideas“Carlos Eire has written a remarkable book, which delights and entertains, certainly, but also asks not only profound questions about the medieval and early modern world . . . but, more pertinently perhaps, about our lingering scholarly discomfort with such a world.”—Salvador Ryan, Irish Theological Quarterly“[Eire] challenges assumptions by providing an informative, engaging, and extraordinarily provocative account of ‘impossible events.’”—Glenn C. Altschuler, Jerusalem Post“[An] absorbing and impeccably researched book.”—Peter Harrison, Public Discourse“A fascinating study. . . . Eire is sincerely sympathetic to the complexities and strangeness of the human condition and writes elegantly and clearly.”—Bob Rickard, Fortean Times“This a work which seeks to boldly fly where no early-modern historian has flown before.”—Alexander Faludy, Church Times“Eire’s aim in this capacious, deeply researched and often perplexing book is to account for episodes of the miraculous.”—Stuart Walton, London Magazine“Eire takes his reader through texts which discuss each of these fascinating individuals—and this book holds significant value simply as a result of how well he tells their assorted stories. . . . Extremely interesting.”—Miles Pattenden, Journal of Religious History“They Flew sets out to do something that many contemporary scholars are unwilling or unable to accomplish: facing a hard, inconvenient part of religious history. Putting biased notions aside, Eire refuses to discard the impossible.”—Keturah Hickman, European Conservative“Carlos Eire has written a remarkable book, which delights and entertains.”—Salvador Ryan, Irish Theological Quarterly“This book is a game-changer. Eire engages in extensive primary textual work in multiple languages, goes down all the skeptical pathways (including demonological ones), and practices the historian’s bracketing of the obvious truth question: ‘Well, did these people fly or not?’ Eire’s deeper conclusion is secreted, or just shouted, in the title: They Flew. And that, well, that changes everything.”—Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities“Eire has once again done the impossible: written a book with the pace of a thriller and the scope of a historical monograph. He has historically unraveled levitations and bilocations, where the temporal merges with the spiritual: Newton’s gravity with Teresa’s ecstasies. Specialists will find deep insights and general readers will enter a new fascinating universe.”—Jaume Aurell, author of Medieval Self‑Coronations: The History and Symbolism of a Ritual“With sophistication and subtlety, sensitivity and sympathy, Carlos Eire follows the unlikely thread of abundant testimonies about human levitation and bilocation in sixteenth‑ and seventeenth‑century Catholic Europe. His book invites self‑examination about cocksure assumptions and uncritical dogmatisms in the present. A profound meditation on religion, history, and the meanings of modernity, They Flew shows that a history of the impossible is not just possible—it has now been realized.”—Brad S. Gregory, author of The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society“Eire has written an engaging and monumental history of supernatural belief during a period when the miraculous coincided with the Age of Reason: flying nuns and friars were contemporaries of Isaac Newton. For Protestants and Catholics alike, the supernatural imaginary maintained a powerful hold.”—Alison Weber, University of Virginia“Only Carlos Eire could take us on this journey to the impossible. A brilliant feat of scholarship and imagination that requires us to look again at an early modern world we thought we knew.”—Bruce Gordon, Yale University