They Flew

A History of the Impossible

By: Carlos M. N. Eire

Narrated by: Emmanuel Chumaceiro

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 Maria de Ágreda, and three disgraced nuns, Eire challenges listeners 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 have resonance and lessons for our time.

©2023 Carlos M. N. Eire (P)2024 Tantor

How Can it Be?

Dr. Eire is a treasure. The artful way he wades into history and “the impossible” is so expert that one cannot help but be satisfied and happy having encountered this fine book.

One of the true greats

What a brilliant historian the man is in complete mastery of his material what a joy to read him and the respect he gives his sources who so many others would just dismiss as crazy

Very interesting. So-so narration.

This is a well researched and interesting read. The narrator pronounces some names and words rather oddly, and at times I wasn’t sure if it was AI narration. Despite this I’d still recommend this for a dip on the deep end, where things get blurry.

Las anecdotas de la manifestación de lo considerado imposible

Me gustaron las anécdotas.
No me gustó que le dedicó mucho tiempo al tema del demonio y las brujas. Fue muy aburrido

Death nell of dogmatic secular materialism

This is a serious history of things considered to be dogmatically impossible in the halls of Official Knowledge, written by someone who walks those halls. While there is much hedging that purported levitations and bilocations from the early modern period cannot be verified forensically, the testimonial evidence is overwhelming. Coupled with extensive records from the inquisitions attempting to disprove such feats, it becomes clear that such impossibilities were not merely a hysterical mass hallucination of backward, gullible, credulous people. It is long overdue that the impossible be taken seriously.