Enigma of the Stigmata

Enigma of the Stigmata

Devout Chiristians have suffered unexplained wounds like those of Jesus on the cross

In his description of Saint Francis after the saint had had a vision of six seraphim on 14 september 1224, Thomas of Celano says, “His hands and feet seemed pierced in the midst by nails, the heads of the nails appearing in the inner part of the hands and in the upper part of the feet.’ The wounds developed abruptly and stayed with Saint Francis for the remaining two years of his life.

Francis’s wounds were the first known manifestation of a phenomenon known as stigmata. Hundreds of people since have spontaneously suffered lesions resembling those of the crucified Christ. Typically, blood drips from the hands, feet and sides, or even from the head where the crown of thorns would have cut the flesh. Although the Roman method of crucifixion was by nailing through the wrists, victims were convinced it was through the hands and that is where the stigmata appeared. Some stigmatics suffer constantly. Others have the wounds only intermittently, often during trance states while witnessing vivid visions of Christ’s Passion of during specific Christian holy days.

Stigmata may be accompanied by other inexplicable phenomena. Over and 11 year period the blood from the wounds of Domenica Lazzari (1815-1848) defied gravity by flowing upwards. Saint Veronica Giuliani (1660-1727) claimed that her stigmata were both external and internal. She drew diagrams to show where a cross, a crown of thorns, three nails, swords and letter had been impressed on her heart. After her death an autopsy confirmed what she had described.

A noted twentieth- century stigmatic was Therese Neumann (1898-1962), from Konnersreuth In Germany. By the age of 21 she was blind and bedridden after a series of injuries, but her ailments were suddenly cured in 1925 after she had a vision of Saint Therese of Lisieux. The following year, during Lent, Neumann announced that Christ had appeared before her. Immediately she felt excruciating pain, and blood began t flow from a side wound. Every Friday that followed, the wound reappeared, healing a day or so later. On good Friday her family saw blood flowing from her side, hands and feet, while bloody tears dripped from her eyes. Then stigmata began appearing on her forehead, and she started losing up to half a liter of blood a day.

Power of the mind?  Since the eighteenth century researchers have noted that many stigmatics have ‘dissociative personalities’, characterised by radical mood swings, trances and visionary states. Skeptics argue that stigmata are psychosomatic, gererated by the effect of the mind on the body. Brititsh researcher Ian Wilson, in his 1988 book The Bleeding Mind, supports the theory that such wounds are self induced and attributable to intolerable personal stress. Even early this century Professor Charles Richet suggested that the wounds show the power of the mind over the circulation processes of the skin. But such mind body effects have not been conclusively demonstrated. When scientists have tried, through suggestion, to duplicate stigmata on hypnotized subjects, the results have been no more than red marks on the skin, nothing like the wounds associated with true stigmatics.

For the devout, no ‘natural’ explanation of stigmata is necessary. Some non-religious theorists, meanwhile, believe they may involve both normal and paranormal elements. Parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo has speculated that true stigmata ‘are most likely to occur when the victim is a contemplative who is prone to hysteria, but who also possesses great psychic powers. The sufferer literally directs psychokinesis onto his won body. This forces lesions to open in the flesh.’