Friday, December 26, 2025
Numerical Precision
Lucien Febvre (1878-1956), The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais, tr. Beatrice Gottlieb (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 171-172:
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What's more, the Rabelaisian device of enumeration, that incredible numerical precision, comes from Maillard. For Maillard knew the number of drops of divine blood that fell on the ground—precisely 47,000. Maillard knew the number of wounds that covered the body of the Man-God—just about 5,475. Maillard knew that the Lord had taken 1,300 steps along the Via Dolorosa and that 190,000 persons went up to Calvary.41This reminds me of my grandmother's insistence that Jesus was the only person in history who was exactly six feet tall. Others might be a little less or more than six feet, but only Jesus was exactly six feet.
41. Abbé Alexandre Samouillan, O. Maillard, $a prédication et son temps (Paris, 1891), pp. 156-157.
