Bible Encyclopedias
Rising in the Air

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

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Rishton, Edward

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Risler, Jeremiah

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the name of a belief (prevalent in the Middle Ages) that the bodies of holy persons were sometimes lifted up and suspended in the air during the continuance of a religious ecstasy. Calmet states in his work on apparitions that this singular phenomenon might be produced by the fervor of the Holy Spirit, by the ministry of good angels, or by a miraculous favor of God, who desired thus to honor his servants in the eyes of men. Numerous instances are recorded in the Acta Sanctorum, and their relation accounts for the frequency with which representations of saints are exhibited in an aerial position in medieval paintings, etc. This belief falls in with one of the alleged phenomena of modern spiritialism.