Own Death Prediction in an hagiographic classical Corpus

Monique Widmer and

Bernard Auriol [1]

Institut Métapsychique International

Abstract

 

 

In every religion and culture, miracles were described. Among them is the ability to prophesy and have precognitions, especially about the own death of the saint.

 

Why were the saints credited of this capacity to predict their death-date ? Was not because they had nothing to fear about dying ! Death is for them the door of unbound bliss ! The Saints are worshipped the day they was born to the heaven : Their death-day !

 

The present investigation has the only purpose to try to know if systematical differences can be found out, in an hagiographic corpus, between predictor and non predictor « canonized catholic saints ».

 

We collected

-          a comprehensive set of the Saints (in the Corpus « Les Petits Bollandistes ») who are pretended to have predicted the date of their own death

-          and a matched sample of the same Corpus related to Saints who did not predict the date of their death.

 

These data  show a tendency along the centuries to a slight increasing of number of predictors compared to the number of non predictors.

 

The delay between prediction announcement and the death itself is smaller than eight days in 25% of stories. But it can reaches several years in 50% of them. The text of the prediction is, very often, vague, ambiguous, without any precision but in 5% to 25% (according to criterion) of the observations.

 

The predictors tell the origin of their prediction is a « vision » or an « interior locution » (21%). In a lot of stories, the hagiograph speaks about an undetermined « revelation » (42%). Sometimes that is a kind of intuition. The remaining data (15%) seem to concern logical prevision.

 

We can note some differences :

 

It is striking that – after our corpus - if a saint suffers martyrdom, accident or assassination, he never predicted his own death !

 

The predictor life is maybe a little bit more « lengendarized » than the other saint stories. There is no significant difference for Age of death, but the mode of the two distributions is different :  about 55 (predictor) against 75 (non predictor). The predictors, compared to the neither-predictors  nor-martyrs, seem die at a younger age, struck more often by some illness. Clearly, in 15% of the stories the saint makes a prediction based on a such logical deduction.

 

It seems the predictor age of death decreases along the century while it is stable for non predictor. Is the age of ancient predictor Saints magnified ? Are we in front of an unconscious drive to die early ? Is the desire to join Heaven strong enough to produce an earlier departure ?

In every religion and culture, miracles or siddhis were described. Among them the ability to prophesy [2] and have precognitions, especially about the own death of the saint. This own death prediction is attested in almost every culture. For example, in hawaian polytheism, buddhism,  judaism, catholicism, orthodoxy, islam, lutherianism, calvinism, new-agism …

 

It is also attested among occultists, astrologists,  poets, writers, actors, etc.

 

Such a phenomenon can receive at least six explanations mutually exclusive.

 

1. probabilistic prevision based on the health condition
2. fear or unconscious drive to die with erroneous prediction
3. psycho-somatic autolysis, producing death without conscious intention to do it
4. divine inspiration, such as considered by ascetico-mystic theology
5. the precognition, such as conceived by parapsychology
6. trickery !…

 

probabilistic prevision based on the health condition

 

In 1895, a seamstress who worked for pathologist Aldred Scott Warthin predicted her own death from colon cancer. The woman had never heard of the MSH2 gene or mismatch repair. But so many of her family members had succumbed to the disease that she concluded, correctly, that she would too. A century later, researchers found a telltale genetic deletion in a descendent of the seamstress — the key to what had killed her and her kin.

(after «http://www.med.harvard.edu/publications/Focus/2000/Dec15_2000/cancer_research.html » )

 

Fear or unconscious drive to die with erroneous (or right) prediction

Isaacs, Reformed Apostolic Church leader, believed his death was imminent and he planned his funeral for midday on January 28 2002, but he did not die as he planned ! Before making the prediction and embarking on a fast last week, Isaacs was said to have been in an excellent condition physically as testified by his doctor. (http://allafrica.com/religion/)

Psycho-somatic autolysis, producing death, with or without conscious intention to do it

 

Geronimo Cardano,  mathematician published some laws of chance governing card and dice games. But he became most famous for his accurate horoscope predictions. He predicted his own death in 1576 - even down to the exact hour. When the time came, he was still healthy, so he killed himself rather than being proved wrong! (http://www.triv.net/trivia.htm).

 

 

Divine Inspiration

 

After catholic theology, free contingent future events, can be known only by God. As a consequence, since the death depends on any free human actions [3] ., one cannot pretend to predict one’s own death ! Unless as a strong probability but not a certainty !

 

 

« In theological terms I would say : Is Certain human (natural) prescience of future contingent event possible ? I insist on the word « certain » , because a scientific knowledge, based on probabilities may be available ! Divine certain prescience is undoubtfull ! Moreover the only Almighty God can have it ! An angelic prescience (in the case of good angels who have the divine contemplation) is conceivable, since good angels alike the Blessed, viewing God, are able to see some things on earth, like God is viewing them. But that is not a perfect prescience as that of God is ! Regarding Bad angels, it seems they do not get prescience at all (because they are not contemplating God). Yet they had so extended intelligence that they can reach great probabilities. If Satan tries to tempt Jesus in the desert, that is because he did not know who was Jesus ! A very certain prescience on earth is possible if God decides to give it and only in that case ! And it is a limited prediction : For instance the prediction by the saints of their own death date ! »   fr. Benoît-Dominique de la Soujeolle, op.

 

 

 

Precognition

 

If precognition is a regular phenomenon of a natural backward causation, why is-it unfrequent and so difficult to experience and to experiment ?

 

If the precognition was well developped , there is an eventual knowledge of the own death date. This risk could explain the repression of that way to know : Not only about death but, by extension, about anything else ! This repression could even strike others parapsychological faculties, insofar as they would be interdependent with the precognition !

 

Why are the saints credited of this capacity to predict their death-date ? Was not it according to the former idea ? A saint being has nothing to fear about dying ! Death is the door of unbound bliss ! The Saints are worshipped the day they was born to the heaven : Their death-day !

 

The present investigation has the only purpose to try to know if systematical differences can be found out, in an hagiographic corpus, between predictor and non predictor « canonized [4] catholic saints ». We have limited our research to the twelve volumes of a monumental well known hagiographic [5] excerpt « Les Petits Bollandistes » !

 

Authors of the Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography Database evoked in their electronic database, the particular case of the prediction of their own death by the byzantins saints (which will remain out of the field of our search). They give an example  :

« A  researcher interested in predictions of death can call up all records in which the words “death” and “prediction” appear together ». In other words, the own death prediction is a lot wider than the Roman catholic sphere !

 

 

Trickery

 

In some detective novel you read about such body who announces he goes to death. Then he pretend to be death with the help of some confederate. Muhammad tell us Jesus has not been crucified but pretended to have been !

 

Method

 

 

In this study we restrict our view to the catholic saints, from the first century until the French Revolution (1787) after the famous « Petits Bollandistes » (« Vie des saints », 12 volumes).

 

In this Corpus we have indexed Saints who were mentioned have predict their own death date we noted the following data.

 

 

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Name	Date of Death	Age	Source of knowledge after the Saint	Publication of Prediction	Delay between prediction and death	Cause of death	Other predictions	miracles	Source of Hagiography
Table 1 : Predicting Saints

 

For comparisons, we built a similar table from the same corpus. We picked equivalent number of hagiographies up, regarding Saints non-predictor, and we filled in the same columns. 

We tried to get a balance between the two samples un term of centuries, date of birth and death. The following data are not present, of course, in this second table :

 

 

 

The following columns remain :

 

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Name	Date of Death	Age		-	-	Cause of death	Other predictions	miracles	Source of Hagiography
Table 1 : Not predicting Saints

 

 

We will examine Table 1, column by column, comparing, when available to the data of the second table. In such a way we will able to see if any hagiographical characteristic is larger or different for predictor versus non predictor.

 

 

Results

 

Predictor

 

The oldest died in 74 and the next recorded in 303 ; most recent died in 1787. Mean X; median X;  but we get two modes : VI and XIII ! Standard deviation: 450.

 

 Figure 1

 

 

 

Table of Comparison

 

Centuriesà	I	II	III	IV	V	VI	VII	VIII	IX	X	XI	XII	XIII	XIV	XV	XVI	XVII	XVIII
Number of Predictor	10				7	21	16	6	5		10		17		30
Nb of Non- Predictor	33				9	12	21	9	10		16		15		12

 

 

The two distributions show different skewness ! There are more non predictor during the first four centuries.

 

1. Because of the martyrs : In the Database, there is no predictor killed as a martyr !
2. Conversely there are more predictor in the last four centuries ! I cannot find out any likely hypothesis for explaining it !

 

 

 

Age of death

 

We are generally told  the death-date of Saints (birthdate to heaven) but more rarely their actual date of birth. (78 on 122, be 64 %). Whenever we know it, we can determine the age at the time of death. On average, this age is 66 years, almost identical to the median (67 years) and the mode (septuagenarian). The standard deviation is 18 years! The database mentions statistics about a great longevity of the Saints.

 

 

Saints longevity after « les Petits Bollandistes » (beyond 60)
Age	Nombre	Age	Nombre	Age	Nombre
60-64	42	80-84	55	100-104	6
65-69	42	85-89	15	105-109	4
70-74	60	90-94	23	110-114	4
75-79	34	95-99	13	115-123	6

 

Figure 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comparison

 

There is no significant difference between predictor and non-predictor for the age of death. The mean and the median are similar but the mode is older for the non predictor than for the predictor : last ones, as we will see, died very often because of health problem.

 

Does age of death change according to the epoch of observation ? We could expect an increasing of age of death according to the centuries.  But we do observe the inverse among the predictor Saints : Correlation coefficient is negative (r = - 0.38) ! Yet that seems specific since age of death seems very stable among the non predictor saints (r = 0,02) !

 

 

 

We could think, this stability were due to the noticeable presence of martyrs, who die younger of course : that presence could balance the decreasing of the curve… But, if we suppress of the Data every martyr, the results do not vary indeed !

The new correlation coefficient is then r = - 0,06 !

 

 

 

 

It seems the predictor age of death decreases along the century while it is stable for non predictor. Is the age of ancient predictor Saints magnified ? Are we in front of an unconscious drive to die early ? Is the desire to join Heaven strong enough to produce an earlier departure ?

 

 

Delay from the prediction to the decease

 

Precision of the prediction

 

For some cases, decease is supposed to be announced with a total precision, the day and sometimes hour would have been revealed to the Saint.

 

We mark the precision of the prediction by two or one exclamation mark for good precision and by one or two question marks for bad one (Cf. figure 3).

 

 

 

 

Figure 3

 

The delay past between the prediction and the decease was lower than 8 days in a quarter of the cases but could reach several years in half of the cases.

 

 

 

 

We wondered, if among the causes of death, disease or martyrdom had a particular frequency. Except the case of Jesus, which we did not include in our study, none the Saints who predicted the date of their death are recorded among the martyrs.

 

 

Here is the same table without martyrdom or violent death :

 

 

We see the predictor died very often by an illness while « old age » or « exhaustion » was more frequent for the non-predictor. It is possible that the devotion of the hagiographs influences their recital in such a way they call prediction the natural prevision which one can do about the end when he/she is struck by illness. Otherwise, the cause of death is undefined in 17% of the stories for the non-predictor versus 33% for the predictor. This poor precision is maybe a clue of a « legendarizing » view, more present for them than for the non-predictor.

 

On the other hand the non prediction of violent death is interesting for parapsychology. Is it due to the litterary style or to the lack of data regarding saints who were not known before their martyrdom ?

 

 

 

Figure 4

 

 

 

 

But the hypothesis according to which the distribution of cause of decease would be independent of precision of prediction is compatible with our data.

 

By what means does the Saint know the date of his own death ? The distribution teaches us a only little thing : it is generally a rather immediate knowledge, acquired in prayer, contemplation and seldom by « vision » or « interior locution ».

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Announcing the Prediction.

 

Once on two, we do not know whom were addressed by the Saint to announce his prediction. When we are informed, it is exceptionally by the mean of a public address. In one third of the cases, the Saint told it confidentially to one or two close relations, and sometimes to a small group of disciples.

 

 

 

 

 

Generally the Saint does not try to become famous by the mean of the prediction. He gives his confidence only to a few groupe of disciples !

 

Conclusion

 

 

We collected

-          a comprehensive set of the Saints (in the Corpus « Les Petits Bollandistes ») who are pretended to have predicted the date of their own death

-          and a matched sample of the same Corpus related to Saints who did not predict the date of their death.

 

These data  show a tendency along the centuries to a slight increasing of number of predictor compared to the number of non predictor.

 

The delay between prediction announcement and the death itself is smaller than eight days in 25% of stories. But it can reaches several years in 50% of them. The text of the prediction is, very often, vague, ambiguous, without any precision but in 5% to 25% (according to criterion) of the observations.

 

The predictor tell the origin of their prediction is a « vision » or an « interior locution » (21%). In a lot of stories, the hagiograph speaks about an undetermined « revelation » (42%). Sometimes that is a kind of intution. The remaining data (15%) seem to concern logical prevision.

 

We can note some differences :

 

It is striking that – after our corpus - if a saint suffers martyrdom, accident or assassination, he never predicted his own death !

 

The predictor life is maybe a little bit more « lengendarized » than the other saint stories. There is no significant difference for Age of death, but the mode of the two distributions is different :  about 55 (predictor) against 75 (non predictor). The predictor, compared to the neither-predictor  nor-martyrs, seem die at a younger age, struck more often by some illness. Clearly, in 15% of the stories the saint makes a prediction based on a such logical deduction.

 

It seems the predictor age of death decreases along the century while it is stable for non predictor. Is the age of ancient predictor Saints magnified ? Are we in front of an unconscious drive to die early ? Is the desire to join Heaven strong enough to produce an earlier departure ?

 

 

Bibliography

 

-          C. Cannuyer, Dictionnaire Illustré de la Bible, Bordas, 1990.

-          H. Delehaye, The Work of the Bollandists through three Centuries, 1615-1915. Princeton University Press, 1922. From the original French: H. Delehaye, L'oeuvre des Bollandistes à travers trois siècles. 1615-1915, 2^nd ed. (= Subsidia Hagiographica,13a), Brussels, 1913.

-          Abbé Paul Guérin, Vies des Saints, d’après les Bollandistes [6] , Surius, Ribadeneira, le P. Giry, les Hagiologies et les Propres de chaque diocèse et les travaux hagiographiques les plus récents, 6° édition, Paris, Palmé, éditeur des Bollandistes, 1866 (Tome 1 à 12).

-          A. Kazdhan, A.M. Talbot, Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography Database,  Trustees for Harvard University, Washington D.C., pp. 1-110, 1998.

-          D. Knowles, Great Historical Enterprises. Problems in Monastic History. London, Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, 1963, p. 3-32: "The Bollandists".

-          P. Peeters, L'oeuvre des Bollandistes, 2^nd ed. (= Subsidia Hagiographica, 24). Brussels, 1961 (reprint 1968).

 

Acknowledgments

 

We wish thank

·         the Dominican Studium Library of Toulouse for the hagiographical books they lend us,

·         fr. Benoît-Dominique de la Soujeolle, o.p. and fr Jean-Hugo Tisin, o.p. for their advices on theology.