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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
In September 1805 bishop John Milner, Vicar Apostolic of the midland district, published an account of the Miraculous cure of Winefrid White in which he concluded that ‘This is the finger of God Exod 8:19, and that even in this age of domineering vice and incredulity, God hath not left himself without testimony Acts 14:16, or to speak in plain terms that an Evident Miracle has been wrought among us’.
Milner’s clear and public conviction about whatever happened at Holywell in the summer of 1805 leads us to enquire about the catholic tradition of miraculous cures in post-Reformation England, and about the possibility of such matters playing a part in the revival of English catholic life. The positive and concerned investigation by the local bishop also indicates something of the changing nature of episcopal duty and responsibility in the early nineteenth century. There are obviously the usual questions about truth and falsehood, physical and psychosomatic recovery, which any ‘cure’ provokes, but the case of Winefrid White is far more interesting in terms of what it tells us about the persistence and recovery of certain catholic traditions.
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