The Restored Leg of Miguel Juan Pellicer (Calanda, 1640)

Birth and youth in Calanda

Miguel Juan Pellicer was baptised on 25 March 1617 in Calanda, in Aragon — “he was doubtless born the same day”, writes Messori^[22]. He was the second of the eight children of Miguel Pellicer Maya and María Blasco, modest farmers^[23]. Illiterate^[24], he received oral catechism from the local priest Don Juan Julis^[25]. His confirmation, celebrated on 2 June 1618 — that is, “the following year”, in Messori's phrase — confirms the date of 1617^[26].

The Castellón accident and the Valencia hospital (1637)

In late July 1637, while working as a day labourer for his maternal uncle Jaime Blasco near Castellón de la Plana, Miguel fell from a mule. A cart loaded with four cahices of wheat (the cahiz, an Aragonese measure of capacity for grain) ran over his right leg and fractured it badly^[27]. He was admitted on Monday 3 August 1637 to the Hospital Real of Valencia, where the nominative admission register, signed by the employee Pedro Torrosellas, describes even the torn “brown-coloured” clothes the injured man was wearing^[28] — a detail whose sole value is to show the degree of precision of a document created years before any controversy.

Diagnosis and amputation in Zaragoza

After a journey of more than fifty days, undertaken by charity^[29], Miguel reached the Royal Hospital of Our Lady of Grace in Zaragoza, where he was examined by a named medical team: the professor and head of department Juan de Estanga, the surgeon Diego Millaruelo and the surgeon Miguel Beltrán. Their diagnosis, recorded in the later depositions, described the leg as muy flemorizada y gangrenada — very phlegmonous and gangrenous — to the point of appearing “negra”, black^[30]. In October 1637 (around mid-October according to Messori^[31]), Estanga and Millaruelo carried out the amputation, four fingers below the knee, with saw and scalpel, then cauterised the wound with a red-hot iron^[32].

The fate of the amputated limb

The student Juan Lorenzo García picked up the amputated limb and showed it to several nurses and to the hospital's chaplain-administrator, Pascual del Cacho, before burying it — with the help of a fellow student — in a hole “one span” deep, that is about twenty-one centimetres, in the hospital cemetery^[33]. This detail is not anecdotal: it is a named witness, and not Miguel's sole later account, who attests to the burial of the limb.

Two years before the eyes of Zaragoza

On leaving hospital in spring 1638, equipped with a wooden leg and a crutch, Miguel was authorised to beg near the shrine of Our Lady of the Pillar. Following the custom of the beggars of the time (the pordioseros), he left his stump visible, which made “the young man's mutilation all the more evident”^[34]. He frequented the chapel daily, anointing his stump every day with oil from the votive lamps — despite the unfavourable opinion of the surgeon Estanga, who replied to him, during the period of the anointings, that “such anointings harmed the healing of his wound because of the dampness of the oil”^[35]. In a city of about 25,000 inhabitants, Miguel was recognised by hospital employees, by pilgrims to the Pillar and by named innkeepers, Juan de Mazas and Catalina Xavierre^[36]. This involuntary social arrangement is crucial for the whole file: Miguel's amputee state is not attested by the family circle alone, but by a large urban population, for nearly two years. In other words, even before any prodigy occurred, hundreds of people in Zaragoza could, in 1638 and 1639, testify that they had seen this young man begging with only one leg — which rules out from the outset the hypothesis of an amputation invented after the fact for the needs of the story.

One hundred and eighteen kilometres on foot

During the first week of March 1640, after more than three years of absence, Miguel covered the one hundred and eighteen kilometres separating Zaragoza from Calanda^[37]. The journey was not anonymous: the file names the companions and hosts who took him in stage by stage — Bemad (probably Bernad), Francisco Félez, Lamberto Pascual, Domingo Martín, Rafael Borraz and Bartolomé — while Juan Monreal, for his part, refused to transport him^[38]. So many people in a position, if need be, to testify that a man still amputated of the right leg did indeed travel this road at the beginning of March 1640. Back in the village between 4 and 11 March, he still begged, amputated, in the neighbouring villages, equipped with a baptism certificate and an official report attesting his disability^[39].

The vigil of 29 March: last observation of the stump

On 29 March, after making nine journeys transporting manure, Miguel gave up his bed to a passing soldier of the royal cavalry and settled on a mattress at the foot of his parents' bed. That evening, neighbours Miguel Barrachina and Ursula Means saw and touched Miguel's stump again during the vigil; the wooden leg and crutch remained placed on a kitchen chair^[40]. This is the last state of Miguel directly observed and touched by witnesses outside the family before the event.

The discovery during sleep

Between 10:30 and 11 p.m., María Blasco, coming closer to see how her son was settled, glimpsed under the cloak not one foot, but two, “one on top of the other, crossed”^[41]. She first thought the soldier was occupying the bed. Her husband lifted the cloak: the two parents then recognised their son and identified on the recovered leg the old scars they knew on him. No witness claims to have observed the reattachment of the limb itself — the sobriety of this account, reported by the mother herself, deserves to be underlined: the file does not rest on a spectacular vision, but on a material observation after the fact.

Miguel would recount having dreamed, that same night, that he was “in the Holy Chapel of Our Lady of the Pillar” and that he was anointing his cut leg with oil from a lamp^[42] — an element which illuminates the immediate religious interpretation of the event by the actors themselves, without substituting for the material observation on which the file is founded.

The first witnesses of dawn

From dawn on 30 March arrived the vicar, the justicia (local magistrate) Martín Corellano, Mayor Miguel Escobedo, his deputy Martín Galindo, the royal notary Lázaro Macario Gómez, and two doctors from Calanda, Juan de Rivera and Jusepe Nebot. Mayor Escobedo would declare that he personally “felt the leg and tickled the sole of the foot”^[43]. A procession and a Mass followed immediately. Observation of the fact therefore remained confined neither to the family circle nor to an exclusively religious circle: within a few hours it mobilised the civil authorities and two doctors.

A limb at first imperfect

The file does not present a miraculously perfect limb from the first hour. The first observations note contracted toes, a purplish colouring, difficult support on the ground, a limb slightly shorter and a thinner calf than the other leg^[44]. Far from being concealed, this initial imperfection is recorded by the witnesses themselves and will become, as we shall see, the most serious objection examined by the tribunal.

Biological evolution over three days, then several months

Within three days, natural warmth and colour returned to the limb^[45]. In the months that followed, its length and volume gradually became normal: at the time of the depositions of June 1640, Miguel “can rest his heel on the ground, move his toes, run without difficulty and even raise his leg to his forehead without any effort”^[46]. The limb had lengthened by nearly three fingers and the calf had recovered a volume comparable to that of the left leg; a circular red scar remained visible at the site of the former amputation^[47].

The identification marks

The file does not merely state that Miguel recovered “a” leg: it documents that the recovered leg was recognised as the one he had lost, from marks prior to the amputation. The notarial deed of 2 April 1640 records three of them, with additional precision on colouring; a fourth mark is attested by the depositions of the trial:

The same deed of 2 April notes that “at the place where the laces of the hose are tied, it could be seen that the part above the knee was for the moment darker than the new leg”^[53] — the amputation having taken place four fingers below the knee^[54]. This difference in tint would fade over the months, as natural warmth and colour returned to the limb.

The notary Miguel Andréu and the ten witnesses to the deed

Three days after the events, the royal notary of Mazaleón, Miguel Andréu, drew up a public deed in Calanda, in the presence of the parish priest of Mazaleón, Don Marco Seguer, doctor of theology, and his vicar Don Pedro Vicente^[55]. The deed designates him as “Royal Notary” — the formula “public notary by royal authority” for the whole of Aragon being that of his deeds in general^[56]. The deed names ten witnesses: the vicar of Calanda, Jusepe Ferrer, opens the list, and Jayme Pellicer and Juan Castañer are described there as “inhabitants of the Commune of Calanda”, compared with four witnesses who were certainly outsiders — Pedro de Vea (Alcañiz), Jorge Cervera (Belmonte), Pedro Vicente (Mazaleón) and Gaspar Pasqual (La Ginebrosa)^[57]. Messori considers that the witnesses are “almost all” foreigners to Calanda, “as if to guard against” any suspicion of local complacency^[58] — an assessment which belongs to him, not a mention in the deed. Eight of the witnesses — Jusepe Ferrer, Pedro de Vea, Matheo Benetan, Colau Calbo, Bartholomé Sans, Jayme Pellicer, Juan Castañer and Jorge Cervera — declare themselves ready to swear before God, before the Cross and on the Four Holy Gospels the truth of what they had seen and heard^[59].

“A miracle guaranteed by a document established by a notary authorised by the State according to all the rules of law and confirmed by ten eyewitnesses.” — Vittorio Messori, Le Miracle impensable, trans. François Rosso, Groupe Fleurus-Mame, 2000, p. 112^[60]

An ordinary protocol for an extraordinary fact

The deed bears the title Acto público milagro que se hizo en Calanda. It is inserted as deed number 22 in the ordinary notarial protocol for the year 1640 (Andréu protocol, preserved at the municipal archives — Ayuntamiento — of Zaragoza), a quarto register of one hundred and twenty pages bound in parchment and containing seventy-two deeds classified in chronological order — sales, leases, wills, dues. The deed of the miracle occupies seven pages there and six lines of the following one, that is one hundred and fifty-one lines in total, equipped with the notary's seal and signature^[61]. This banal insertion, in the midst of deeds of the ordinary life of an Aragonese village, constitutes a strong documentary argument against the hypothesis of an isolated late fabrication: to forge an entire deed after the fact supposes making it agree, in a bound and dated register, with the seventy-one other deeds of the same year.

A chain independent of the diocesan trial

The Calanda deed is not a preparatory piece for the future diocesan trial: no witness from Mazaleón is heard at the trial, and the deed itself is never mentioned there. “Not the slightest element of contradiction with the notarial deed drawn up at once is found in the minutes of this trial”, notes Messori, who finds only one imprecision between the two pieces: the deed gives Miguel about twenty-four years, whereas he had just turned twenty-three^[62]. Two distinct documentary chains, produced a few weeks apart by different actors, therefore converge without having been harmonised with each other.

From the day after the events, the justicia Martín Corellano for his part drafted an información sumaria, a first civil report intended for the higher authorities of Aragon. This document is lost today, but its author would be heard as the eighteenth witness at the diocesan trial, and its transmission can be followed, according to the letters of the chapter of the Pillar of 1640 noted by the Gran Enciclopedia Aragonesa, as far as the Count-Duke of Olivares and Philip IV^[63][64].

The Calanda file thus rests, from April 1640, on three documentary chains produced by distinct actors, at close dates but without direct dependence on one another:

That one piece has disappeared — Corellano's report — therefore does not weaken the file as a whole: the other two chains, independent of one another, suffice to document the event and its canonical recognition.

An initiative of the municipality, not of the Church

On 25 April 1640, the Pellicers went to Zaragoza: Professor Estanga and his collaborators recognised the patient and the leg they had amputated. It was not, however, the ecclesiastical authority, but the municipality of Zaragoza which, on 8 May 1640, formally requested the opening of a trial — three assessors and twenty-eight councillors voting unanimously, under the leadership of Mayor Lupercio Díaz de Contamina, with Felipe de Bardaxí, Gil Miguel Fuster (named “Gil Egidio Fuster” in the sentence) and Miguel Ciprés as representatives of the civil authorities^[65].

A tribunal on which no canon of the Pillar sat

The trial opened publicly on 5 June 1640. Archbishop Pedro de Apaolaza Ramírez presided over it, assisted by nine theologians and canonists and four notaries charged with authenticating the deeds^[66]. A notable fact: no canon of the Pillar — the shrine directly benefiting from the devotional prestige of the affair — sat on the tribunal; the canons of the college came from the Seo, the cathedral of the episcopal see. The nine signatory councillors of the sentence moreover included a Franciscan provincial (Bartolomé Foyas), a prior (Antonio Xavierre) and professors (Domingo Cebrián; Felipe de Bardaxí, moreover one of the three representatives of the city)^[67]. Messori sees in this “an additional guarantee” against the suspicion of a judgment rendered in favour of the Pillar's own interests^[68]: this is not autonomous proof of the supernatural fact, but an element which appreciably reduces the risk of an institutional conflict of interest.

Twenty-four witnesses, thirty-three questions, a repeated oath

Twenty-four witnesses were selected to cover the whole factual chain, divided into five distinct categories^[69]:

Each answered thirty-three questions and repeated, after each answer, the formula Y esto dixo ser verdad, per juramentum — “and this, he said, is truth, under oath”^[70]. Each deposition was read back to the witness, who could correct it before signing it or affixing a cross to it, then a notary sealed it. The minutes of the trial name one hundred and two people in total. This architecture is not accidental: Messori underlines that “the criterion which presided over the choice of witnesses is their capacity to give an account of the different stages of Miguel Pellicer's story”^[71] — the tribunal deliberately constructed a chain of witnesses capable of covering, without break, the beneficiary's whole journey, from the accident of 1637 to the night of 29 March 1640.

Nine witnesses to accredit the witnesses

The tribunal did not content itself with gathering twenty-four depositions: it added nine accreditation witnesses — four priests, two doctors, two students and a peasant — charged, over the course of five distinct hearings, with guaranteeing the reputation and sincerity of each of the first twenty-four witnesses, with a standard formula:

“I consider and have always considered this witness as a good Christian, fearing God, respectful of his own conscience, in good faith, credible and completely sincere.” — Accreditation formula quoted by Vittorio Messori, Le Miracle impensable, trans. François Rosso, Groupe Fleurus-Mame, 2000, p. 148^[72]

Miguel's identity put to the test

The tribunal did not presuppose that the man examined in 1640 was indeed the one who was amputated in 1637: it explicitly posed the question. Twenty-two witnesses out of twenty-four swore they had no hesitation that it was the same man; only two answered with a prudent “me parece” (“it seems to me”) — the hospital chaplain and a nurse, who had known Miguel little before the amputation. No witness gave a contrary opinion^[73]. The hypothesis of a twin or substitution of person moreover comes up against the parish register of 1617, which mentions no twin brother, in a village community where the Pellicer family was known to all^[74].

What the tribunal recognises as proved, and by whom

The sentence, delivered after almost eleven months of work and fourteen public and plenary sessions — less than thirteen months after the events^[75] —, takes care to distinguish facts known by Miguel alone from those established by concordant and multiple testimonies:

“Although some of the facts reported above are deduced from Miguel's sole deposition, it is nevertheless proper to hold them as worthy of faith [...] But we are not in such a circumstance, given that the fact which reveals the miracle is proved by numerous concordant testimonies.” — Pedro de Apaolaza, sentence of 27 April 1641, quoted in Vittorio Messori, Le Miracle impensable, 2000, p. 301^[76]

The sentence moreover refers by name to the precise probative apparatus rather than to a general conviction: the amputation itself is established by the answers of witnesses 1, 5 and 7 to questions 11 and 12; the last observation of the stump, on the eve of the event, by witnesses 8, 9, 10, 12 and 13 in answer to questions 21 and 22, “who saw the scar of the cut leg and touched and palpated it with their own hands”^[77]. The tribunal further distinguishes, in its operative part, the identity of Miguel's person — proved by the answers to question 29 — and the identity of the leg itself, “which is the same as the one that had been amputated” — established by witnesses 8, 10 and 13 at question 24, then 5, 8 and 11 at question 30^[78]. Two hypotheses of fraud — substitution of person, substitution of limb — thus each receive a distinct documentary answer, and not a global and vague refutation.

Miraculous restoration and natural recovery: a legal distinction

The sentence directly confronts the most serious objection arising from the observations themselves: the at first unstable foot, the contracted nerves and toes, the cadaverous colour, the shorter and thinner leg, a slight persistent pain^[79].

“[He had] the nerves and toes of the foot contracted and almost unusable, and he did not feel normal warmth in his leg, whose colour was cadaverous and which was neither as long nor as thick as the other; all this seems contrary to the essence of the miracle [...] .” — Pedro de Apaolaza, sentence of 27 April 1641, quoted in Vittorio Messori, Le Miracle impensable, 2000, p. 302-303^[80]

The tribunal replies by distinguishing two objects. On the one hand, the restoration of the limb itself: a thing nature cannot produce, either instantaneously or gradually, and which alone constitutes the miracle. On the other, the subsequent functional recovery — warmth, suppleness of the nerves, length, volume, strength —, which nature can complete with time, without its progressive character abolishing the initial restoration:

“What is miraculous, namely the restoration of his leg to the said Miguel, was accomplished in a perfect and instantaneous manner. As regards the rest, namely warmth, extension and suppleness of the nerves, length and thickness of the leg, fatigue in effort, recovery of energy and strength, it was not necessary that all this should happen miraculously, for nature can accomplish it alone.” — Pedro de Apaolaza, sentence of 27 April 1641, quoted in Vittorio Messori, Le Miracle impensable, 2000, p. 304^[81]

In the sentence, the chronology of this recovery — within three days the warmth of the body returns, then the nerves and toes relax, finally the leg lengthens until it becomes as long as the other — is attached to a second reading, that of a “multiplication of the miracle”: “He also willed, by another miracle, that after three days…”^[82]. The tribunal thus presents the two readings: possible natural completion on the one hand, a new miracle on the other. As for the slight residual pain reported by Miguel, the tribunal notes that “it likewise constitutes no obstacle” to recognition of the miracle^[83]: the file therefore does not need a perfect limb from the first minute to be coherent — it needs, and it provides, proof that an absent limb was restored.

The final declaration and its promulgation

“We affirm, pronounce and declare that to Miguel Juan Pellicer, native of Calanda, who has been the subject of this trial, his right leg, which had previously been amputated, was miraculously restored; that it was not a fact of nature, but an admirable and miraculous work.” — Pedro de Apaolaza, sentence of 27 April 1641, quoted in Vittorio Messori, Le Miracle impensable, 2000, p. 306^[84]

The sentence was promulgated in the presence of two priest witnesses, Bartolomé Claudio and Francesco Aznar, and authenticated by Antonio Alberto Zaporta, notary and apostolic clerk of the trial^[85]. The civil representatives of the municipality, Felipe de Bardaxí, Gil Egidio Fuster (the same as the “Gil Miguel Fuster” of the vote of 8 May 1640) and Miguel Ciprés, also approved the document — proof that recognition of the fact did not remain a purely internal ecclesiastical act, but also engaged the civil authority which had requested the opening of the trial^[86].

Answering the objection “the trial can no longer be consulted today” requires carefully distinguishing several pieces, which popular accounts often confuse into one.

From the close of the trial, notaries and clerks of the archiepiscopal curia established, on the same day or the next day, two authentic copies of the sentence and of all the deeds: one for the municipality of Zaragoza, the other for the chapter of the Pillar^[87]. The municipal copy disappeared in 1809, in the destruction of the communal archives during the Napoleonic sieges of Zaragoza: the Municipal Archives date these losses to the sieges of 1809, and the Casas del Puente which housed the archives burned in the bombardments of 1809^[88]. The original, preserved at the metropolitan curia until the 1930s, was then lent to Father Lambert — who left Spain in 1934 — and was never recovered despite the searches undertaken^[89].

What survives and is authoritative today is the notarial trasunto preserved in Zaragoza — “metropolitan archives” according to Messori^[90], “archivo del Pilar” according to the Gran Enciclopedia Aragonesa^[91]. In the Spanish notarial law of the time, a trasunto is not a simple late copy recopied by some scribe: it is a legal deed in its own right, established on the same day by an authorised notary, who engages his own professional responsibility by certifying the perfect identity of the text with the original. In other words, losing the original of the trial is not the same as losing the trial itself, as long as such an authentic trasunto survives — which is precisely the case here. The term is defined thus by the Aragonese archival tradition: “an exact replica, a complete and unaltered transcription of the original, authenticated through the care of a notary depending directly on the authority from which the original emanates, and established on the same date as it”^[92]. This document comprises sixty-three large-format folios, written on both sides, reproducing the entirety of the trial including the complete interrogation of each witness; Martín de Mur, principal clerk of the diocese, wrote its first and last lines in his own hand and affixed his seal. Ten additional folios reproduce the sentence separately, authenticated by the notary Antonio Alberto Zaporta^[93].

This stratification does not weaken the file: on the contrary, it reveals its robustness. A 1761 copy, made from the sole trasunto preserved in Zaragoza — the original then being normally available at the archives of the curia but not used for this copy —, proves that as early as the 18th century the authorities treated the trasunto as legally interchangeable with the original^[96]. Three printed editions (1829, 1872, 1894) follow one another before the disappearance of the original, followed by a fourth in 1940 — the Gran Enciclopedia Aragonesa also reports re-editions in 1970 and 1974^[97] —, offering so many independent points of control of the text.

Two publications of 1641 and 1642

The chapter of the Pillar entrusted, at the beginning of May 1641 — barely more than a week after the close of the trial —, the drafting of a summary of the deeds to the Discalced Carmelite Jerónimo de San José. The booklet, equipped with the required authorisations, appeared the same year^[98]. The following year, a German doctor from Trier, Peter Neurath, made the journey to Aragon and published in Latin a work founded on an inquiry conducted on site, notably from the medical point of view, equipped with three imprimaturs (ecclesiastical authorisations to publish) and a royal authorisation^[99].

The testimony of the Jesuit Jerónimo Briz

The nihil obstat (attestation that no obstacle opposes publication) of Neurath's work bears the signature of the Jesuit Jerónimo Briz, who attests that he personally knew Miguel's two states:

“I knew the young miracle recipient, first with one leg missing and asking for alms at the door of the shrine of Zaragoza, then in Madrid [...] on his two legs; and I saw him walk. [...] I saw the scar that the Most Holy Virgin left at the place where the leg was amputated [...] I also knew the parents of the miracle recipient, as well as the surgeon who cut off his leg.” — Jerónimo Briz, nihil obstat quoted by Vittorio Messori, Le Miracle impensable, 2000, p. 169-170^[100]

This named testimony links in a single sentence five elements of the file: the amputated state, the later state, the scar, the family and the surgeon. Briz was moreover the brother of the rector of the shrine of the Pillar at the time of the trial^[101] — a link with the shrine to keep in mind, even if his testimony concerns facts he says he observed himself.

The audience before Philip IV

In autumn 1641, Miguel was received in audience by King Philip IV. The diplomatic corps attended the interview, so that the event left a trace outside Catholic Spain: the English ambassador, Sir Arthur Hopton — knighted on 2 February 1638, never a peer —, reported on it to his king Charles I in a diplomatic report; the content of this dispatch is reported only by Messori^[102][103]. Messori specifies that the detailed dialogue sometimes reproduced in later accounts derives from a literary reconstruction founded on documented facts, and not from a verbatim record of the interview^[104].

The painting of 1654

Only thirteen years after the conclusion of the trial, an inscription on canvas attests that a painting was painted in 1654, representing the restoration of the leg by two angels. Commissioned for the church of Nombrevilla, it is preserved today at the Pillar^[105]. This painting documents the early reception of the account in Aragonese religious iconography; it does not claim to document the event itself.

The acceptance of the Bollandists

The Calanda file did not circulate only in Aragonese popular devotion: in 1729, it was received into the Acta Sanctorum (volume VI of July, Antwerp, Jacobus du Moulin), whose index refers to “Pellicer (Michael Joannes) crus abscissum ope Deiparæ Cæsaraugustanæ recepit 117 & seqq.” and to “Brizius (Hieronymus) S. J. … 118”^[106]. It was thus submitted to the examination of the Bollandists, the Jesuit scholarly society specialised since the 17th century in historical criticism of the lives of saints and miracles. Their conclusion, reported by Messori, is unambiguous:

“What more could even an extremely circumspect person desire in order to grant his credence?” — Conclusion of the Bollandists on Calanda, quoted by Vittorio Messori, Le Miracle impensable, trans. François Rosso, Groupe Fleurus-Mame, 2000, p. 238^[107]

This acceptance by a Catholic critical authority, accustomed to setting aside poorly supported devotional files, adds a further filter to that of the diocesan trial itself.

A rediscovery in the 20th century

After the publications of 1641 and 1642, the file enjoyed limited international diffusion: it remained mainly known in Aragon, around the shrine of the Pillar, without ever attaining the notoriety of Lourdes or Fatima. Its modern reconstruction owes much to a handful of 20th-century researchers who reopened and cross-checked the archive pieces: Eduardo Estella Zalaya, Leandro Aína Naval, Manuel Marina and Tomás Domingo Pérez — author of El milagro de Calanda y sus fuentes históricas (2006)^[108] — are the main archival relays cited by Messori, alongside the popularisation book published in 1959 by the French priest André Deroo^[109]. Messori himself claims, for his investigation, direct consultation of the pieces in Zaragoza rather than a simple second-hand compilation:

“I was above all able to feel the emotion of holding in my hands and deciphering with my eyes the original minutes of the trial [...] .” — Vittorio Messori, Le Miracle impensable, trans. François Rosso, Groupe Fleurus-Mame, 2000, p. 63^[110]

This chain of transmission — contemporary booklet of 1641, translations of Neurath's work (Douai 1642, Innsbruck 1645, Münster 1648)^[111], 18th-century relays (Retz 1717, Acta Sanctorum 1729, Hume 1748), Spanish editions of the 19th century, then archival rediscovery of the 20th century —, that is an echo that remained weak outside Spain^[112], explains why such a complete file remains, even today, largely ignored outside Spain and circles specialised in the critical study of miracles.

Traces of an ordinary life (1641-1647)

The archives make it possible to follow Miguel until 1647. He was a godfather at Molinos in 1641, travelled to Castellón then to Valencia in 1642, became a godfather again in 1643 and 1645. In 1646, he requested with his father a burial authorisation, never used. Letters written from Mallorca between November 1646 and February 1647 mention unspecified “levities” and a request for a guardian^[113]. The file does not seek to idealise the rest of Miguel's life: it contents itself with what the archives really make it possible to say, without drawing from it a moral conclusion that the documents do not provide.

A refuted legend: the “hanging” of Pamplona

A late rumour claims that Miguel ended up hanged in Pamplona. The commune of Calanda itself sent a delegation to investigate on site: “the searches have formally discredited this rumour, as sinister as it is fanciful”^[114]. A plausible explanation advanced by Messori is the confusion between Pamplona and Palma de Mallorca, where a travelling companion of Miguel was indeed imprisoned^[115].

A probable death at Velilla de Ebro (1647)

The parish register of Velilla de Ebro, dated 12 September 1647, bears this entry:

“Today died Miguel Pellicer, who said he was a native of Calanda and who was transported here from Alforque, more dead than alive.” — Parish register of Velilla de Ebro, 12 September 1647, quoted by Vittorio Messori, Le Miracle impensable, 2000, p. 214^[116]

The parish priest Nicolás Portal attests that he confessed him and gave him extreme unction; a marginal annotation, in an old but later hand than the deed, proposes identifying this dying man with the miracle recipient of Calanda. The identification is judged probable by the tradition which transmitted the file, without being absolutely certain: Miguel Juan Pellicer therefore probably died at Velilla de Ebro on 12 September 1647, more than seven years after the night of Calanda (seven years and five and a half months).

A file nearly four centuries old calls for serious objections. Treating them one by one, from the pieces themselves rather than from general impressions, is the only honest way to measure its real solidity.

Objection 1 — “Miguel Pellicer may never have been amputated”

Answer. The hypothesis must explain how a young man could have deceived for two years a named medical team, the innkeepers who lodged him, and an urban population of 25,000 inhabitants who came across him daily at the Pillar. The trial specifically examines this question: witnesses 1, 5 and 7 — including Estanga, García and del Cacho — depose on the amputation itself in answer to questions 11 and 12^[117]. Miguel's amputation is therefore not asserted on the sole faith of the family account: it is established by these depositions and by witnesses outside the family. The sole hospital register cited in the file, admission to the Hospital Real of Valencia on 3 August 1637, is for its part prior to the amputation itself^[118].

Objection 2 — “Another man took his place, or it is all a nocturnal confusion”

Answer. The last direct observation of the stump takes place less than two hours before the discovery — the sentence specifies “one hour before the said Miguel … retired to sleep”^[119] —, by neighbours who saw and touched him^[120]. The sentence explicitly poses the question of the identity of the person — question 29 — and that of the identity of the leg — questions 24 and 30 —, as two distinct problems to be proved separately^[121]. Twenty-two witnesses out of twenty-four swore without hesitation that they recognised the same man^[122], and the hypothesis of a twin brother comes up against the parish register of 1617, silent on any twin birth, in a village where the Pellicer family was known to all^[123].

Objection 3 — “It was a clever prosthesis, not a real limb”

Answer. A prosthesis could not explain the lancet prick given by a village doctor in the recovered leg, during the pilgrimage of late April 1640 — after which Miguel limped for several days, according to Estanga's deposition^[124] —, nor that the limb changed appearance over the months — lengthening, increase in volume of the calf, gradual disappearance of the difference in colouring^[125]. Messori summarises the objection at its fair measure: “a prosthesis which over the months changes appearance and slowly and gradually takes the form, colour and volume of the other leg” is no longer, by definition, a prosthesis^[126].

Objection 4 — “The whole affair is a concerted fraud between the family and the local clergy”

Answer. Three elements make this hypothesis costly to sustain. First, it is not the Church but the municipality of Zaragoza that requests the opening of the trial^[127]. Next, no canon of the Pillar sat on the tribunal: the canons of the college came from the Seo, cathedral of the see, alongside regulars and professors^[128]. Finally, the notarial deed of 2 April names ten witnesses — including three from Calanda and four who were certainly outsiders —, in a document drawn up several weeks before the opening of the diocesan trial and which never served as a piece in the latter^[129][130]. A concerted fraud would therefore have had to mobilise, without detectable flaw or contradiction noted by an adversarial tribunal, municipal actors, rival ecclesiastics and independent notaries, over more than a year. To this is added a contextual indication, not an autonomous piece of evidence: in the Spain of the 17th century where the Inquisition actively monitored popular devotions and claims to the supernatural, no inquisitorial intervention came to interrupt the diffusion of the file, the publication of the booklets of 1641 and 1642, nor the veneration born of it in Zaragoza^[131].

Objection 5 — “The original of the trial has disappeared, so the file is now worthless”

Answer. This objection confuses several distinct pieces. The original from the curia, lent in the 1930s, was never recovered; the municipal copy burned in 1809; but the notarial trasunto preserved in Zaragoza is, by legal definition, a complete and authenticated transcription, established on the same date as the original, by a notary depending on the same authority^[132]. Three printed editions (1829 — notarised —, 1872, 1894) moreover precede the disappearance of the original, and a fourth appeared in 1940^[133]: so many independent verifications.

Objection 6 — “The leg was not perfect from the first day, so it is not a true miracle”

Answer. It is the tribunal itself which formulates this objection before answering it, without concealing it^[134]. Its answer distinguishes the restoration of the limb — impossible to nature, instantaneously or gradually — from the recovery of its functions — warmth, suppleness, length, volume —, which nature can complete with time^[135]. Requiring a restored limb to be immediately identical in every point to the other amounts to confusing two different questions: that of the existence of the limb, and that of its full convalescence.

Objection 7 — “Cardinal de Retz and David Hume long ago discredited this case”

Answer. Cardinal de Retz states, in his Memoirs written from 1665 and published in 1717, that he saw in Zaragoza in 1654 a man now provided with both legs. But his account, written without notes eleven years after a single visit, implicitly situates the miracle in Zaragoza, confuses the liturgical feasts and attributes to the amputation a duration of seven years, far above the real two and a half years^[136]. Some old editions even inserted into his text the word “alleged” — “this alleged miracle” —, absent from the critical edition of 1837^[137]. It is precisely on this interpolated version that David Hume relies when he evokes, in the body of section X (part 2, § 10.26) of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, the case of an Aragonese doorkeeper (“door-keeper”) who had served seven years: his sole source is Retz, not the judicial file itself^[138]. No note in the section concerns this passage. Hume's general maxim deserves to be quoted in his own terms:

“No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish.” — David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section X, 1748^[139]

Hume's principle is a general philosophical thesis on the relative weight of testimonies, debatable in itself; but applied to the case of Calanda, it would require holding as more probable the concerted falsehood of a notarial deed, twenty-four depositions under oath and a reasoned sentence than the fact they establish — whereas Hume never discusses these pieces, only the faulty account of a cardinal who never consulted the file (see What is a miracle?, “The limits of the Humean argument”).

Objection 8 — “The pit where the leg was buried proved empty, which proves manipulation”

Answer. A newspaper of the time, the Aviso Histórico of 4 June 1640, reports that the initial pit no longer contained any trace of the limb^[140]. This is a spectacular element, but it is contemporary press information, not a medico-legal exhumation protocol detailing who dug, when and before which qualified witnesses. The Calanda file does not rest on this pit: it rests on the complete chain — attested amputation, two years of public begging, last observation of the stump, immediate notarial deed, adversarial trial and reasoned sentence. The empty pit is an atmospheric piece, not the pillar of the demonstration.

Summary of the objections and their documentary answers

The Miracle of Calanda is not a laboratory-reproducible fact: no modern investigation will ever be able to examine, with today's medical imaging, a leg restored in 1640. But it does not have to be judged by that standard either, which no 17th-century archive could provide. It must be evaluated as a historical and judicial file is evaluated: proximity of witnesses to the facts, publicity of the infirmity before the prodigy, plurality of independent documentary chains, contradiction — or its absence — between these chains, and rigour of the procedure that examined them.

From this point of view, Calanda occupies a singular place among ancient Catholic miracles. Most reported healings concern an internal illness, where the theoretical possibility always remains of an erroneous diagnosis or a spontaneous remission misunderstood by the medicine of the time. Here, the object of the miracle is the restoration of an amputated and buried limb — a fact which leaves no room for diagnostic ambiguity, and whose absence for two years was observed by an entire city before the prodigy. The combination of a notarial deed drawn up at once, independent and materially banal in its form, and an adversarial trial conducted under oath by a tribunal on which no canon of the beneficiary shrine sat, gives this file a documentary density rare for its time.

For the Catholic faith, the meaning of the miracle is not reduced to an anatomical curiosity. The restoration of a concrete limb, marked by a personal history — scars, dog bite, excised cyst —, is part of a theology of the body where God does not save a disembodied soul, but a whole person, body included. The Catholic Church believes in the resurrection of the flesh: not the attribution of an anonymous body, but the restoration of each person's own body. The Miracle of Calanda, recognised by the sentence of 27 April 1641, anticipates this hope — the sign that God does not despise wounded matter, historical, marked by accident and the work of a life.

Compared with the most studied apologetic files — the healings of Lourdes, submitted since 1883 to a permanent Medical Bureau, or the miracle of the sun of Fatima, observed simultaneously by tens of thousands of witnesses —, Calanda occupies a place apart: it has neither a modern medical committee, nor a crowd of eyewitnesses to the fact itself. Its own strength lies elsewhere, in the rapidity and independence of its judicial documentation: a notarial deed drawn up within three days, an adversarial trial opened within ten weeks at the initiative of a civil authority, and a reasoned sentence which itself distinguishes, with almost modern precision, what rests on Miguel's sole deposition from what is established by numerous witnesses.