Illness, Self-inflicted Body Pain and Supernatural Stigmata

Stigmata, that is the replication of the sacred wounds of Jesus Christ in the body of his devout believer, is a most specific religious manifestation, first emerging in medieval Latin Christendom. These wounds represent an infirmitas noteworthy from many different angles. In the first place they are an emulation of the infirmity suffered by Jesus Christ for the redemption of humankind: an imitatio Christi, which goes to the utmost extreme from the bodily point of view for reproducing, with the constraining logic of the self-sacrifice, the beneficial, redemptory effect of Christ’s crucifixion. The stigmatization of Saint Francis of Assisi in 1224, this ‘grand and singular miracle’ (as described by Pope Alexander IV in 1254 ¹ ) was meant to propagate the message that in those times an alter Christus had been active. Any research on stigmata should start with the understanding of ‘the five wounds of Saint Francis’ – how they could come about and what their effect was on posterity.