ABSTRACT
On March 21, 1619, Benedetta Carlini underwent successful thoracic surgery of a kind not thought possible prior to the pioneering work of Christian Barnard in South Africa. Benedetta was a nun who lived in the Theatine Convent at Pescia in northern Italy. But Benedetta was far more fortunate than any of Dr. Barnard’s patients. For her surgeon was no ordinary physician but Jesus the Christ Himself, and the heart she received in exchange for her own was no ordinary human heart, but the very heart of Jesus.1 Benedetta was a mystic, one of many nuns who during the Catholic Reformation had direct experience of God, and the favors she received from her Lord, while uncommonly dramatic, were neither without precedent nor inconceivable to her contemporaries.
