Documents / Document
This is an 1880 book, The Apparitions and Miracles at Knock, prepared and edited by John MacPhilpin of Tuam and published in Dublin by M. H. Gill and Son. The Internet Archive holds a Google scan of the Harvard College Library copy. It reprints Tuam News accounts and the official depositions of eye-witnesses to the apparition of 21 August 1879 on the sacristy gable of Knock Church, County Mayo. It argues that natural light could not have caused the apparition and lists cures recorded in Archdeacon Cavanagh's diary.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# CHAPTER IV. ## ARE WE SURE OF THE APPARITION? The village of Knock is now spoken of not only in Ireland, in England, in Scotland, but in America. Letters from the most distant districts in the far-off United States of the American Continent have been received, in which detailed questions have been put respecting the "apparitions and the miracles" at Knock. It is quite impossible to answer all the inquiries made on the several points proposed, regarding the general subject and the detailed events that have been narrated, and which, it is stated, have actually taken place. The events can well be grouped under two headings, namely, those respecting the Apparition seen on August 21st, 1879, the eve of the octave of the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and those that tell of the "miracles" that have been wrought since Christmas last. It is easy enough to deal with the question of the first Apparition, because the proofs regarding it rest on the evidence of the witnesses who assert, and even swear, that they beheld it. These are at least fifteen in number. ## Reasoning on this point. How it could happen that fifteen persons of different ages, and of different ways of thinking and of living—persons differing in age, in condition, in place, and position, could, without any apparent reason, conspire to say they all saw a certain thing which, in the opinions of those who do not credit their narration, they did not see, and that they were under that delusion (not one, but all of them) that they saw it, some for one hour, some for an hour and a half, some for
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 91 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.