Are there any VMS-type hoaxes?

[MarcoP]

I believe that "hoax" is simply an attempt to make people accept and believe in something false.

My personal opinion is that it’s not so “simply” and I fully agree with Koen:

It has always my opinion that people use the words "hoax" and "forgery" too loosely when it comes to the VM. What it always comes down to is the intention of the creators, which we cannot know.

There are two huge problems:

1. As Koen said, we usually don’t know what an author was attempting to do; usually, we can only speculate about their intentions, since they rarely are explicitly stated, and if they are we don’t know if the author is being honest.
   
2. The definition of “false” is very tricky. People always believed and still believe in contradictory things. It seems to me that it’s again about the unknown feelings of the author: did they believe that what they wrote was true?
   

This is a passage from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by Tommaso da Celano, written a few years after Francis's death. Is this “an attempt to make people accept and believe in something false”? Hoax?
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

While he was staying in the hermitage which, from the place where it is situated, is called La Verna, two years before he rendered his soul to heaven, he saw in a divine vision a man, like a Seraph with six wings, standing above him, with his hands outstretched and his feet joined together, fastened to a cross. Two wings were raised above his head, two were extended as though for flight, and the remaining two covered his whole body. … While he could not clearly understand the meaning of the vision, and its extraordinary nature remained deeply impressed upon his heart, the marks of the nails began to appear on his hands and feet, exactly as, a little before, he had seen the man above him crucified. His hands and feet appeared to be pierced through the very middle with nails, the heads of the nails being visible on the inner side of the hands and on the upper side of the feet, while their points projected on the opposite side. ... His right side, too, seemed to have been pierced by a lance and was covered with a scar, from which blood often flowed, so that his tunic and undergarments were many times sprinkled with the sacred blood. Alas! How few were deemed worthy, while the crucified servant of the Crucified Lord was still alive, to behold the holy wound in his side! Yet blessed was Brother Elias, who, while the saint was still living, was privileged to see it in some measure; but less blessed was Brother Rufino, who even touched it with his own hands. Indeed, once, when the aforesaid Brother Rufino slipped his hand inside the garment of the most holy man in order to scratch him, his hand, as often happens, slid down to his right side. There it happened to touch that precious scar. At its touch, the holy man of God felt no small pain, and, pushing Rufino's hand away from himself, cried out, "May the Lord forgive you!"

---

From You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Is this “an attempt to make people accept and believe in something false”? Hoax?

From the fifteenth degree of the sign of Aries comes the "stone that draws gold." By its nature it is hot and dry, and its color is yellow, tending somewhat toward brown. When a person takes it in the hand, it feels smooth and somewhat soft. This stone attracts gold and causes it to obey it, just as the magnet attracts iron. If gold is filed into shavings, and those filings are mixed with earth or with some other substance, then, if the stone touches the mixture, it will separate the gold from the other materials with which it is mixed, and all the gold will cling to the stone. … This stone also possesses another virtue: it gives great joy to the heart, so that whoever gazes upon it in the morning will remain cheerful throughout the whole day, unless some great misfortune should befall him and make him sad. The middle star of the three that lie in the bend of the River has power over this stone, and from that star it receives its virtue. When this star is in the ascendant, the stone displays its powers more clearly.