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Stigmata: In Imitation of Christ
Skeptical Inquirer, July, 2000 by Joe Nickell
Of reputed miraculous powers, perhaps none is more popularly equated with saintliness than stigmata, the wounds of Christ's crucifixion allegedly duplicated spontaneously upon the body of a Christian. Indeed one historical survey indicated that about a fifth of all stigmatics are eventually beatified or canonized (Biot 1962, 23).
The year 1999 brought renewed interest in the alleged phenomenon. Among the offerings were the movie Stigmata (which even contained a brief shot of my book, Looking for a Miracle [Radford 1999]); a Fox television pseudodocumentary, Signs from God, which featured a major segment on stigmata (Willesee 1999); and the Vatican's beatification of the Italian stigmatic Padre Pio (CNN & Time 1999). For an in-progress television documentary, I took a new look at the subject.
Evolving Phenomenon
From the death of Jesus, about A.D. 29 or 30, nearly twelve centuries would pass before stigmata began to appear-unless one counts a cryptic Biblical reference by St. Paul. In Galatians 6:17 he wrote, "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Many scholars believe Paul was speaking figuratively, but in any case the statement may have been sufficient to prompt imitation.
St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) is credited with being the first stigmatic-- or at least the first "true" one, his affliction occurring just two years after that of a man from Oxford who had exhibited the five crucifixion wounds in 1222. That man claimed to be the son of God and the redeemer of mankind, but he was arrested for imposture, his wounds presumed to have been self-inflicted.
In 1224 St. Francis went with some of his "disciples" up Mount Alverno in the Apennines. After forty days of fasting and prayer he had a vision of Christ on the cross, whereafter he received the four nail wounds and a pierced side. Francis appears to have sparked a copycat phenomenon, since publication of his reputed miracle was followed by occurrences of stigmata "even among people who were much lower than St. Francis in religious stature, and have continued to occur without intermission ever since," according to Catholic scholar Herbert Thurston (1952, 122-123). He continues:
What I infer is that the example of St. Francis created what I have called the "crucifixion complex." Once it had been brought home to contemplatives that it was possible to be physically conformed to the sufferings of Christ by bearing His wound-marks in the hands, feet and side, then the idea of this form of union with their Divine Master took shape in the minds of many. It became in fact a pious obsession; so much so that in a few exceptionally sensitive individuals the idea conceived in the mind was realized in the flesh.
Thurston believed stigmatization was due to the effects of suggestion, but experimental attempts to duplicate the phenomenon, for example by using hypnosis, have been unsuccessful--except for a related case which appears to have been a hoax. (The psychiatrist reported that bloody tears welled inside the subject's eyelids, but a photograph shows rivulets originating outside the eyes [see Wilson 1988].)
As the thirteenth century advanced, exhibitions of stigmata began to proliferate, one authority regarding it as "a sort of explosion" (Biot 1962, 18). Within a hundred years of St. Francis's death over twenty cases had occurred. The trend continued in successive centuries, with no fewer than 321 stigmarics being recorded by 1908. Not only were they invariably Catholic, but more than a third had come from Italy and the rest mostly from France, Spain, and Portugal, demonstrating that "the Roman Catholic countries, mostly with a Latin and Mediterranean influence have dominated the history of stigmata" (Harrison 1994, 9; Wilson 1988, 10).
The twentieth-century record of stigmata, however, "shows a change in pattern." Italy dominated somewhat less, and cases were reported from Great Britain, Australia, and the United States (Harrison 1994, 9). The latter included (in 1972) a ten-year-old African-American girl named Cloretta Robinson, a Baptist and thus one of a very few non-Catholic Christians to have exhibited the stigmata (including at least three Anglicans; Harrison 1994, 9, 87).
Other evidence that stigmata represent an evolving phenomenon comes from the form of the wounds. Interestingly, those of St. Francis (except for the wound in his side) "were not wounds which bled but impressions of the heads of the nails, round and black and standing clear from the flesh" (Harrison 1994, 25). Since then, although bleeding wounds have been typical they have been exceedingly varied, showing "no consistency even remotely suggesting them as replications of one single, original pattern" (Wilson 1988, 63). For example, some wounds have been tiny, straight slits, others simple crosses, multiple slash marks, or indentations--even, in the case of Therese Neumann, shifting from round to rectangular over time, presumably as she learned the true shape of Roman nails. In some instances there were no apparent lesions beneath the seepages (or possibly fake applications!) of blood (Wilson 1988, 64; Harrison 1994, 70; Nickell 1999).
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