STIGMATA. The word Stigmata means marks or brands. St. Paul speaks (Galatians vi. 17) of bearing in his body the marks (stigmata) of the Lord Jesus. He is speaking metaphorically. It is claimed, however, that there have been a number of cases in which marks have appeared on the bodies of very devout persons resembling the wounds of Jesus. It is claimed further that these marks were miraculous. St. Francis of Assisi (1182 1226) in 1224 saw in a vision a man fastened to a cross. After this there appeared on the body of St. Francis the mark of the stigmata of Jesus—the wounds on the hands and feet and in the side. These marks were concealed from most people during the life of St. Francis, but on his death they were seen by a number of persons, by fifty of the Brethren and very many seculars. Pope Benedict XII. instituted a Feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis. St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) told her confessor, Raymond of Capua, that the Lord had impressed upon her the stigmata. Painters were forbidden by Sixtus IV. to represent her stigmatisation, but " a special feast in commemoration of it was granted to the Dominicans by Benedict XIII." (Cath. Diet.) In 1694 the marks of the crown of thorns and of the crucifixion are said to have appeared on Veronica Giuliani. In 1831 she was canonized. The stigmata of Anna Katharina Emmerich (1774-1824), who became a nun, are said to have bled every Friday from the year 1812. Louise Lateau (1S50 1883) was another noted example of stigmatization. The phenomenon was not confined to Catholics. Mary Anne Girling (1827-1886), for instance. who founded the sect known as " The People of God," is said to have had a similar experience. Formerly, when stigmatization was not regarded as miraculous, it was treated as imaginary or fraudulent. We now know that it need not be either the one or the other. Stigmata may arise, not through
miracle, but through concentration of the human mind. This has been proved by experiments in " hypnotism." For instance, in the Hospital Marie at St. Petersburg, a man was told that after warming himself at a stove, which had not been lighted, a •redness would appear on his arm and blisters would break out. He touched the door of the cold stove and uttered a cry of pain. This was followed first by a redness and swelling on the arm and then by a number of blisters (Olston, p. 174 f.). The writers of " Religion and Medicine" have in fact good reason for saying that much in the experience of the mystics and monks of the Middle Ages " which has been rejected by the scientific mind as incredible, and accepted by the religious mind as miraculous, is now seen to be neither one nor other, but a reality to be explained in terms of psychical processes." They make special reference to stigmatization. " Perhaps the most striking of these phenomena is that of stigmatization which has, however, been paralleled in our own time in the case of some hysterical patients. From St. Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena to the famous case of Louise Lateau there has been a succession of susceptible souls who by intense mental concentration on the sufferings of the Saviour, on the wounds in His hands and feet and side, have in some way, inexplicable to physiology, so affected the bodily organism as to reproduce in it the sorrows of the Crucified. And thus in a very real sense they may be said to have borne branded on their bodies the marks of the Lord Jesus'." See Prot. Diet.; Oath. Diet.; A. B. Olston, Mind Power. 1906; E. Worcester, S. McComb, and I. H. Coriat, Religion and Medicine, 1908.