Wounds of Jesus gladly suffered by devout followers

The first documented case of someone showing wounds similar to those suffered by Jesus came centuries after the crucifixion.

History: St Francis of Assisi receiving the Stigmata by Peter Paul Rubens c.1635. Public domain i

In 1224 Francis of Assisi travelled to the chapel Santa Maria degli Angeli on Mount Alverno in the Tuscan Apennines, to observe 40 days of fasting. While alone in his cell, contemplating the sufferings of Jesus on the cross he claimed to have been visited by a seraph who left him with five wounds corresponding to those inflicted on Jesus.

This is the first documented case of what became known as Stigmata. When Francis showed his followers the wounds, nail holes in his feet and hands and a spear wound in his side, they were convinced that he was indeed singled out by God. The order he had founded, the Friars Minor (lesser brothers), seemed now to have a divine link. When Francis died two years later he was canonised and his order became known as the Franciscans.

Good Friday is observed by Christians as a commemoration of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, many meditate on the sufferings inflicted on Jesus, as detailed in the gospels. Jesus is said to have been beaten by Roman soldiers (a passage in Corinthians suggests he was whipped 39 times), a crown of thorns placed on his head, then afterwards crucified.

Crucifixion was a torturous method of execution used by the ancient Romans, Persians and Carthaginians, where people are nailed to a wooden scaffold or post of some kind. Some evidence suggests the Romans used a cross-shaped scaffold, but other forms existed including X-shaped and a capital T-shaped scaffolds. Victims of crucifixion usually died slowly of exposure, dehydration or asphyxiation as they became unable to support their own weight and collapsed on the cross.

Depiction of the Crucifixion in Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grunewald (1480-1528).

The Romans waited until the victim was dead before taking down the body, or sometimes left it to rot as a warning to others not to commit the same crime. At Jesus’s death one of the Gospels mentions that a centurion punctured his side with a spear to make sure that he was dead, allowing blood and water to flow from the wound.

According to the Gospels, afterwards the body was taken down and placed in a tomb but after three days the tomb was found to be empty. Jesus later appeared to his mother Mary to say he had ascended to heaven. Eight days later he appeared to his disciples,, including Thomas who doubted it was Jesus until he touched the “print of the nails” in his hands and feet and the spear wound in his side.

The Apostle St Paul, in a letter to the Galatians, wrote “From henceforth let no man trouble me; for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. It was probably meant figuratively but some have interpreted it as the first instance of Stigmata. The word itself is the plural form of the Greek word stigma meaning mark, it is the word that Paul used in his letter.

There are no other documented cases of Stigmata until St Francis in the 13th century, but thereafter there are many notable cases, some well documented. The sudden appearance of people claiming to bear the marks of Jesus coincides with the Catholic Church’s placing more emphasis on the human side of Jesus and his physical suffering, that would become apparent with the introduction of the feast of Corpus Christi in the 13th century.

Most only show the holes in the hands or feet, while others have shown marks of the side wound, whip marks on their back and even cuts on the head like those from the crown of thorns. Most of the hand wounds displayed by those with Stigmata are in the palm of the hand, but research has shown that to support the weight of a body on a cross the nails would need to have been driven in through the wrists. Witnesses have also never seen the wounds spontaneously appear, they have only seen them after they have started bleeding.

Those who claim to have received the Stigmata bear it willingly as a way of being at one with Jesus and taking some of the suffering for the sins of humanity. Since Francis’s manifestation of the Stigmata there have been more than 400 reported cases, several of them in the century following Francis’s death, and the greatest proportion of them women.

One of the most famous cases was that of Dominican sister the Italian mystic Caterina Benincasa, who would become known as St Catherine of Siena. Born in 1347 in Siena, Benincasa would play a role in bringing the papacy back from Avignon to Rome, but as a young woman reported having visions and bearing the marks of Christ. Out of humility Catherine is said to have prayed that the wounds become visible only to herself and they disappeared.

Padre Pio, a canonised Italian Capuchin friar famous for having Stigmata, in 1964.

More recently the Italian monk and mystic Padre Pio, born Francesco Forgione in 1887, was also said to have displayed signs of stigmata from 1910 when he was ordained as a priest. The wounds healed but in 1918 returned and stayed with him for most of the rest of his life, except for a notable period when he was incapacitated by illness. He died in 1968 and was canonised by Pope John Paul II in 2002.

Originally published as Wounds of Jesus gladly suffered by devout followers