The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show - Ariel Gore [72]
The first widely documented case of the stigmata was Saint Francis of Assisi’s back in 1224. Already old and sick, Francis had an ecstatic vision of a six-winged angel embracing a crucified man. Afterward, and until his death two years later, Francis bore the marks on his hands, feet, and side. Early accounts described dark scars that bled periodically.
Since Saint Francis, there have been some five hundred reported cases of the stigmata. Their existence is well-enough documented that it’s no longer a subject of hot debate. Still, hard-core skeptics figure the injuries are always self-inflicted. And there have been cases of attention-seeking holy self-mutilators over the years. Poor Magdalena de la Cruz, a sixteenth-century Franciscan nun in Spain, was honored as a living saint before she confessed that it was all a hoax. I guess life can get boring in the convent—you can hardly blame a cloistered nun for pulling a wacky publicity stunt every now and again—but even stigmatics who’ve been examined extensively by doctors have had a hard time getting anyone to take them seriously.
When Berthe Mrazek, a Brussels-born lion tamer and circus performer, added the stigmata to her repertoire in the early 1900s, she ended up in an insane asylum. More recently, in the mid-1980s, Gigliola Giorgini was convicted of fraud by an Italian court. Were Berthe and Gigliola quacks? Probably. But virtually every stigmatic in history has been challenged as either a lunatic or a fraud.
A common theme in the biographies of these mystics, after all, is that even before the wounds appeared, they were all a little bit loony. There’s a fine line between mysticism and madness. Even Saint Francis and Padre Pio—both widely believed to have received the wounds of Christ as a result of true mystical experiences—were also well-known nut cases in their youths.
And consider the modern-day Father James Bruse, an unassuming associate pastor at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Virginia. His pre-ordination life included a stunt that got him into the 1978 Guinness Book of World Records: he rode a roller coaster for five days straight! He became a Roman Catholic priest the following year and, in the early 1990s, he not only experienced the stigmata, but discovered religious statues weeping in his presence.
Some people get all the excitement.
Other commonalities in the lives of stigmatics include a penchant for fasting (pronounced “eating disorder” in modern psychiatric language) and self-flagellation (or self-mutilation). Teresa Neumann, for example, a German mystic and stigmatic, survived solely on communion wafers from 1926 to 1962. And Saint Catherine of Siena began refusing food at the age of seven, often went without sleep, and reportedly beat herself daily. Had she come of age in twenty-first-century America, her antics might well have earned her a bed in the psych ward and a prescription for Paxil.
Psychologists point out that eating disorders and self-mutilation—like the stigmata itself—are significantly more common in women than in men. Some researches have even associated the wounds with Munchausen syndrome. But self-inflicted stigmata heal naturally. In the more widely accepted cases of mystical stigmata, blood flows freely and cannot be cured or stopped with traditional medical intervention.
One curious theory put forth by skeptics who nonetheless agree that not all stigmatics are sitting in their cells driving nails into their hands and feet is that the wounds are psychically self-inflicted. It’s sort of a new age “power of positive thinking,” “believe and achieve” argument. It’s a place where paradox-embracing mystics and logic-dependent scientists can come to agree about something they can’t quite explain. They call it the “theological placebo effect.” This theory holds that a powerful imagination engaged in intense prayer can manifest just about anything. It neither affirms nor denies the existence of a divine intelligence, so it’s a handy compromise at otherwise-awkward family dinners.
Virtually all stigmatics are Roman Catholics,