LEVITATION. — Term designating phenomena involving the raising, displacement, and suspension in the air of heavy objects, and more often of the human body, without visible support and without a controllable physical action.
Many cases are reported in hagiographical history. One of the most important is that of St. Giuseppe da Copertino (1603–63), in whose beatification proceedings more than 70 cases of bodily rapture are cited, occurring in the city of Copertino alone or in its environs: he was seen to fly from the middle of the church to the pulpit, across a distance of approx. 25 metres, at times carrying his confessor and other people with him. Pope Urban VIII witnessed one of these l. as did the grand admiral of Castile (in 1645) and Giovanni Federico di Brunswick (in 1649), who, impressed by this event and by the holiness of the Servant of God, abjured the Lutheran heresy. Other historically verified l. are those of St. Stefano d’Ungheria, St. Pietro d’Alcantara, St. Francesco Saverio, St. Andrea Fournet, the Ven. Francesco Suárez, and others. Among the l. of objects, ecclesiastical history reports several involving statues, images, crucifixes, etc. Among those established through official investigations, the miracle of the monstrance of Favernay is famous: it remained suspended for almost two days during a fire in the church (26–27 May 1608), as did the miracle of the Blessed Sacrament at Turin, which gave rise to the church of Corpus Domini. The transportation of the Holy House of Loreto is also attributed to this type of l.
The phenomenon of l. is also attested in Buddhist, Muslim, and Taoist tradition, as well as in mediumistic phenomena. There are likewise pseudo-physiological or pathological l., which properly speaking are not l. but rather the patients’ illusions. Nor should certain forms of somnambulism and acrobatic hysteria be confused with l.; these keep the sick in extraordinary positions and result from images in their imagination, which command impulses and acts of exceptional agility.
Among l. of demonic origin, noteworthy are that reported by Sulpicius Severus in the life of St. Martin, involving a possessed man whom the Saint saw raised and suspended in the air, and that of the possessed Francesca Fontaine, which occurred at Louviers in 1591 and whose records are preserved in the National Library of Paris (ms. 24/122, French collection).
The theological, medical, and metapsychical sciences (v.) study the phenomena of l. and their interpretation. Present-day theories establish considerable differences between l. of religious and non-religious origin, and explain the phenomena at times through angelic or divine intervention, at times through diabolical intervention, whether manifest or concealed beneath spiritualistic or metapsychical appearances; without excluding little-known capacities of the human being, who under certain conditions of mind might modify bodily qualities, especially during the graces of mystical union, whether ecstatic or non-ecstatic.
BBL.: A. Farges, Les phénomènes mystiques distingués de leurs contrefaçons humaines et diaboliques, Paris 1920; O. Leroy, La Civilisation, there 1928; H. Bon, Medicina e religione, Italian translation, Turin 1940, pp. 259–67. In particular: P. E. Franciosi, Vita di s. Giuseppe da Copertino, Recanati 1925. Arnaldo M. Lanz