Problems

One of the greatest challenges presented by the Rocamadour miracle collection lies in the fact that when the author addressed the issue of why it was being written, he did so in ways which avoided any sense of chronological specificity. Two elements of the preface to Book I, in which the most complete statement of authorial purpose was made, suggest that the absence of an overt link between when the collection was being made and why it was being written was the consequence of deliberate choices about what to emphasize. In the first place, the author presents the stories that he is recording as simply the latest instances in a long and continuous process; the only significant difference between what is finding Its way into the collection and the ‘infinity’ of examples from before ‘our times’ is the practical point that he is limiting himself – so he says – to what he has seen himself or learned from reliable sources. To focus upon recent events is, then, an editorial strategy designed to cope with a potentially enormous amount of material; the author states that he is preparing a ‘pick’ (flos) of the Virgin’s miracles. Of course, this idea of making a choice selection from a large body of material is a rhetorical device to be found in many miracle colections. But the Inference to be drawn from the Rocamadour author’s use of this motif is that in his formulation the chronological setting of the text was simply an incidental consequence of his act of writing - his opening words are in fact ‘Scriptures miracula’, ‘As I begin to write the miracles’ – and not a reflection of any developments In the cult or the wider world that he wanted to stress.

Secondly, the author’s emphasis in his justification of the writing of the text suggests that he was much more interested in issues of space than of time in relation to his church and its reputation as a site of the miraculous. Rocamadour, he argues, is the centre of a cult that is characterized by so many signs and miracles because it has been singled out by the Virgin Mary; it is this act of choice which has given the place its particular status among the churches of the world.