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MacPhilpin 1880, Google Books scan of Harvard copy

Internet Archive · 91 pages · text by OCR

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.

  • p. 1 …A public domain book is one that was never to copyright or whose legal copyright term…
  • p. 27 …the church, the reflection from them could never beam on the outside at the foot of…
  • p. 32 …The tenants have never been rich. The wealthiest is only so far above want, that one…
  • p. 38 …Either the Apparition was a reality; or, it never took place; and all the fifteen witnesses…
  • p. 39 …point of fact (if he were deceived), never had occurred. And then you must multiply that…
  • p. 40 …the gables of a house, and they never continue longer than a few moments, like a…
  • p. 41 …It is never even, nor at rest. But in the Apparition there was no rippling, or…
  • p. 51 …It was still bright; I had never heard from Miss M'Loughlin about the vision which…
  • p. 53 …a large globe of golden light; I never saw, I thought, so brilliant a light before…
  • p. 56 …sight to be seen at the chapel such as we never before beheld, and she told
  • p. 58 …came there first I thought I would never leave it. I would not have gone so…
  • p. 60 …bright at the south gable, but it never entered my head that it was necessary to…
  • p. 85 …I never walked on the heel, but simply tipping the ground with the top of my…
correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, London. The annexed is the written testimony of John P. MacCloskey, penned by himself, to which he signed his name. Young MacCloskey has been remarkable from his childhood for his guileless, honest, and pious course of life. He is now about eighteen years. His testimony is confirmed by the separate attestation of the other two, MacGeoghegan and Conway:—

I, John P. MacCloskey, a native of Claremorris, remember the night of the 9th of February, and the morning of the 10th. Simon Conway, MacGeoghegan, and I left Claremorris at 10 o'clock, P.M. We arrived at Knock sometime after midnight; our desire was to behold the Apparition. After we had arrived, we continued to pray for some time. At about three and a half o'clock on the morning of the 10th of February, while I was praying before the gable of the Knock chapel, I saw a light, like a white silvery cloud, move in a slanting direction over from where the cross stands, on the apex, and overspread the gable. In this bright cloud I saw distinctly the figure and form of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so clearly and fully that I perceived the fleshy colour of the feet. Her dress resembled that made of white satin, and it contained numerous folds. The light had hardly settled on the gable when it began to grow less bright, and to seem to fade or darken in colour, leaving a wreath of its own brightness still around the head of the Blessed Virgin, while the rest of the gable became the colour of white paper stained with pencil strokes. Every now and then a red tongue of flame used to shoot down from the heavens and cross the gable. During the momentary brightness resulting from these flashes, the figure of the Blessed Virgin was each time fully seen. In the absence of such flashes she was seen too, but not so distinctly, only in subdued tones of colour. What attracted my attention to the gable at first was small stars of an emerald

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Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 91 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.