ABSTRACT
The conflict between the Church and the new Italian State and its culture characterized the second half of the nineteenth century. This conflict was not only political but also cultural and scientific. Some sectors of the Catholic front, mainly the Jesuit review La Civiltà Cattolica, tried to pursue an apologetic program in defense of Catholicism, in which science and medicine had a significant role. The chapter focuses on a series of articles, published in La Civiltà Cattolica from 1888 to 1889, about the relationship between the body and the sanctity and its supposed signs: ecstasies, stigmata, and visions. The Jesuit journal aimed to separate the pathological cases from the mystic ones, to present the supernatural features of a modern saint’s body and to underline the limits of rationalistic medicine in giving scientific explanations. Discussing the effects of sanctity on bodies and quoting from both the Christian hagiography and scientific studies, La Civiltà Cattolica tried to overturn the traditional arguments, accusing laic and positivistic scientists of hypocrisy and scientific dogmatism. In the Jesuits’ opinion, the medicine had to recognize its limits: only the Catholic theology could explain phenomena, whose origin was not in the natural and material world, but supernatural and divine.
