Stigmata

STIGMATA (STIGMATES). — From the Greek στίγμα, meaning “mark, sign”; in Christian hagiography and mysticism, they are signs of the wounds of Jesus impressed upon the body of a servant of God.

1. NOTIONS

upon runaway slaves, and in the East upon all slaves, and sometimes upon soldiers (and in all countries upon livestock), to indicate their master or leader. In the New Testament the term occurs only in Gal. 6:17 (stigmata Domini Iesu in corpore meo porto): s. Paul, with clear reference to Eastern usage, calls the traces on his body of the sufferings endured for the name of Jesus “s. of Jesus,” in the sense that these make him resemble his crucified Master and identify him as his true slave and soldier.

The s. are for the most part external and visible (sometimes they are invisible, but their painful effect is no less perceptible: the most celebrated case among these is that of s. Caterina da Siena, reported by b. Raimondo da Capua [cf. Benedetto XIV, De Servorum Dei beatificatione, lib. V, parte 2ª, cap. 8, nn. 4-8]). The phenomenon occurs chiefly in the hands and side; but other parts of the body may also be affected (e.g., the forehead, after the example of the crowning with thorns; the shoulders, by analogy with the burden of the Cross; the back, as a reflection of the scourging of Jesus, etc.). Visible stigmatization is ordinarily accompanied by the discharge of blood onto the surface or into the subcutaneous region, by bloody wounds, and, when it is deep, by laceration of the tissues. In the case of simple superficial erosions or other doubtful signs, it is probably not a matter of s. The phenomenon may be permanent and continuous, or intermittent, that is, limited to particular periods. The wounds and bleeding may remain constant with regard to form and anatomical location, or vary in form, intensity, and extent, and shift from one part of the body to another. Stigmatization may be accompanied by preternatural or simply mysterious phenomena, which, however, are ancillary and independent (e.g., ecstasy, clairvoyance, the gift of tongues, penetration of hearts, the total or partial disappearance of appetite or sleep, etc.). When true or apparent stigmatization is accompanied by phenomena of a psychopathic nature, as not infrequently occurs especially in female subjects, it is the psychiatrist’s task to assess the matter beforehand.
II. LE S. DI S. FRANCESCO. — Nella storia sono ricordati ca. 330-350 casi di persone stigmatizzate (una ottantina già elevate agli onori degli altari), tra cui solo una cinquantina di sesso maschile (cf. A. Imbert-Gourbeyre, La stigmatisation, Clermont-Ferrand 1894, dove sono elencati 321 casi). La cifra secondo alcuni sarebbe suscettibile di aumento, secondo altri invece è esagerata (cf. P. Debonne, in Etudes carmél., 20 [1936, 11], pp. 22-59), essendovi non pochi casi dubbi o di scarsa attendibilità. Il primo e il più importante caso di stigmatizzazione è quello di s. Francesco d'Assisi, avvenuto sulla Verna nel 1224, due anni prima della sua morte. Il fatto delle s. di s. Francesco è concordemente narrato e descritto nei minuti particolari dai primi e più autorevoli biografi: Tommaso da Celano (teste oculare, cf. De miraculis, II, 5), Giuliano da Spira (ca. 1232, cf. Anal. Francisc., t. X, 1, pp. 363 sgg.; e vi accenna anche nell'Ufficio rimato, capp. 12-30, cf. 385), s. Bonaventura. La notizia fu pubblicata subito dopo la morte del Santo dal suo vicario e successore frate Elia nella Lettera enciclica ai frati: documento Eliano (Anal. Francisc., t. X, 1, pp. 525-28). Nella cosiddetta pergamena d'Assisi figurano i nomi di 16 testimoni oculari che videro le s. sul corpo di s. Francesco dopo la morte (cf. Misc. Francesc., 15 [1913], p. 131 sgg.). Vi accenna anche frate Leone, che accompagnò il Santo sulla Verna, nella pergamena della benedizione autografa di s. Francesco che si conserva nel S. Convento (Tommaso d'Eccleston fa sapere che questo discepolo amava raccontare ai frati le circostanze che accompagnarono l'avvenimento, cf. Anal. Francisc., I (1885), p. 245). Si aggiungono le testimonianze autorevoli di Gregorio IX, amico del Santo (5 apr. 1237, cf. G. G. Sbaralea, in Bull. Franc., I, Roma 1759, pp. 214 e 211), e di Alessandro IV (29 ott. 1255; ibid., II, ivi 1762, p. 86), il quale si appella ai testi oculari, tra i quali, come informa s. Bonaventura, era lo stesso Pontefice da cardinale (Legenda Maior, cap. 13, 8).

Secondo queste testimonianze, un mattino intorno alla festa dell'Esaltazione della Croce, nell'eremo della Verna il Santo, assorto in preghiera nella contemplazione

della Passione di Gesù, vide scendere un Serafino con sei ali, tra le quali appariva l'effigie di un uomo avente le mani e i piedi confitti a forma di croce; scomparsa la visione, si manifestarono nelle sue mani e nei suoi piedi i segni dei chiodi come nell'immagine del Serafino, e nel lato destro del costato una larga ferita, dalla quale spesso usciva sangue, che inzuppava le vesti. Nelle mani e nei piedi si vedevano prominenze carne nere e rotonde a forma di chiodi, quasi ritorti e ribattuti, nella parte interna delle mani e sulla parte superiore dei piedi, mentre le loro punte uscivano dalle parti opposte (Celano, Vita I, parte 2ª, cap. 3, n. 95 e cap. 9, n. 112; De miraculis, cap. 2, nn. 4-5; s. Bonaventura, Legenda maior, XIII, 3; XV, 2). I segni delle s., sebbene gelosamente celati dal Santo, furono visti, lui vivente, da un buon numero di frati e da altre persone degne di fede, compresi alcuni cardinali, e alla sua morte da una cinquantina di religiosi, da s. Chiara con le sue consorelle e da molti laici (Celano, De miraculis, II, 5).

La verità del fatto non può essere perciò messa in dubbio, e nemmeno il suo carattere prodigioso; la stessa vanità degli sforzi per darne una spiegazione puramente naturale ne è la controprova. Per le circostanze specialissime che lo accompagnarono, fra le quali l'imponenza dei segni, con profonda lacerazione dei tessuti, e la loro inalterata continuità per più di due anni (larga trafittura del costato con frequente emissione di sangue, mani e piedi traforati da trafiggenti chiodi di carne formati da tendini e nervi attorcigliati insieme): esso è un fatto unico nell'agiografia.

La Chiesa si è ripetutamente pronunciata per la verità ed il carattere soprannaturale delle s. di s. Francesco, come si deduce dalle testimonianze dei papi da Gregorio IX e Innocenzo IV a Pio XI (cf. AAS, 16 [1924], pp. 362-65) e dalla festa che se ne celebra il 17 sett. nella Chiesa universale: l'Ordine Francescano la celebrò fin dalla prima metà del sec. XIV per indulto di Benedetto XII (1334-42) o già di Benedetto XI (1303-1304); Paolo V nel 1615, per istanza di s. Roberto Bellarmino, estese la concessione a tutta la Chiesa: la festa fu poi resa obbligatoria da Clemente IX ed elevata a rito doppio da Clemente XIV.

L'iconografia delle s. di s. Francesco occupa un posto importante nella storia dell'arte: la prima rappresentazione con data certa è la tavola di B. Berlingheri in S. Francesco di Pescia del 1235, che servì di esempio ai pittori per tutto il '200. Ma la vera fioritura artistica sul soggetto incominciò nel '500, sia per la crescente popolarità del prodigio, sia per l'influsso della perfetta rappresentazione giottesca negli affreschi della basilica di Assisi.

Nella liturgia dell'Ordine Domenicano è commemorata al 1º apr., per concessione di Benedetto XIII (1727), la stigmatizzazione di s. Caterina da Siena (sulla cui realtà storica si fecero, massime nel sec. XV, molte animate discussioni), come nell'Ordine Carmelitano si fa analoga festa della trasverberazione di s. Teresa. Per alcuni altri santi e beati stigmatizzati (p. es., s. Caterina de' Ricci e b. Lucia da Narni O. P.) se ne fa un cenno semplice nelle lezioni storiche approvate per i rispettivi istituti o diocesi. Ma nella maggior parte dei casi la Chiesa non si è pronunciata, anzi, come nel caso di s. Gemma Galgani, ha detto espressamente di non esprimere alcun giudizio circa la sua stigmatizzazione che sarebbe avvenuta nel 1899 (cf. AAS, 24 [1932], p. 57). In genere si riconosce che le s. sono un fenomeno assai complesso e perciò vanno diligentemente esaminate caso per caso; non è sempre facile stabilire se debbano attribuirsi a intervento soprannaturale. — Vedi tsv. XCII.

Arch. Franc. hist., 3 (1910), pp. 393-432 (a confutazione delle conclusioni di J. Merkt); S. Mencherini, Cod. diplom. della Verna e delle sacre s. di s. Franc., Firenze 1924; V. Facchinetti, Le s. di s. Franc. d'A., Milano 1924 (con 75 illustraz. artist. delle s.; M. Faloci Pulignani, Le più antiche testimon. sulla verità delle s. di s. Franc., in S. Franc. d'A., 4 (1924), pp. 192-96; A. Gemelli, Le affermata, della scienza intorno alle s. di s. Franc., in Studi francese., nuova serie, 10 (1924), pp. 368-404; W. Lampen, La liturgia delle sacre s., ibid., pp. 323-343; P. Nesi, Iconogr. delle s. di s. Franc. nel sec. XIII, ibid., pp. 289-322; J. Felder, Trois témoignages inconnus sur les Stigmates de St François, in Etud. Francisc., 34 (1924), pp. 121-25. Gaetano Stano

III. MEDICAL STUDY

The external or visible stigmata are genuine lesions of the soft tissues, not produced by external agents or by diseases, which appear unpredictably in fixed, specific areas, suddenly, and which are preceded or accompanied by extremely vivid physical or moral sufferings. Sometimes, on the other hand, the pain appears when the stigma inexplicably disappears. They are ulcers sui generis, circumscribed and varying in appearance, shape, and size: rounded or oval; superficial, deep, or perforating. In the latter, the diameter may be the same on the back and on the palm of the hands or on the sole of the feet, or else—and almost always—on one side it may be several centimetres wide, while on the other it is punctiform. The stigmata release a simple oozing of blood or a genuine hemorrhage; the blood is red and bright, mixed with serum; the hemorrhage, per rexim, may be continuous, intermittent, or periodic, especially on certain religious anniversaries and particularly during Passion Week.

The stigmata should not be regarded as wounds or sores, since these entities tend to cicatrize by virtue of the normal reparative powers of the affected tissue; rather, they are special ulcers and therefore show no tendency to heal. No dressings or most suitable treatments succeed in cicatrizing them; they undergo neither infection nor decomposition, do not become necrotic, and do not emit a foul odour; they remain stationary and unaltered for many years, contrary to every law of nature. They are covered by reddish-brown crusts, produced by the coagulation of the blood.

The stigmata are not an exact reproduction, particularly as regards location, of the wounds of Jesus, which today are known with absolute certainty Shroud (v.); indeed, in some stigmatized persons a larger opening is seen on the back of the hand, whereas in the palm there is barely a punctiform lesion. Moreover, they do not appear—and this observation is important in rebutting the theory of those who regard them as determined by suggestion—in the location of the wounds of the Crucified before whom the individual prays; for, until the seventeenth century, crucifixes had the wound in the side on the right, whereas the stigmata appeared on the left.

In these phenomena the Church is rightly very strict and, only after rigorous studies and examinations by physicians and theologians, has pronounced in favour of a very limited number of cases that displayed all six characteristics of the stigmata, namely: instantaneous appearance, significant alteration of the tissues, persistence and unalterability despite every therapy, hemorrhages, absence of suppurative processes, and instantaneous and perfect cicatrization. It should also be remembered that genuine stigmata appear in healthy persons who practise the most heroic virtues and who usually possess special gifts, such as ecstasy, levitation, premonition, etc.

Numerous are the theories accepted by various schools that seek to remove the supernatural character of the stigmata by attempting to provide a scientific explanation for them, invoking hysteria, suggestion, psychopathic and metapsychic phenomena, etc. But none of these syntheses withstands objective, rigorously scientific criticism. Charcot maintained that in hysterical persons suggestion could provoke sufficiently important vasomotor phenomena, even leading to oedema; the neuropsychiatrists of the Salpêtrière school spoke even of hemorrhagic events. All this, they said, was more likely to occur and became more conspicuous during hypnosis or in the state of sleep under the influence of dream thought. Dr. Abadir reports the case of Dr. Osty, formerly director of the Institute of Metapsychics in Paris, who is said to have succeeded in making graphic signs and even raised letters of a red colour appear on the arm of a subject whom he himself had hypnotically influenced. Platonoff claimed to have produced in a person under suggestion, through a complex of conditioned reflexes, ecchymoses and even vesicles similar to those caused by burns. Still other authors have thought that the stigmata could be naturally explained by autosuggestion, that is, as the product of the powerful impression aroused by thinking about and vividly picturing wounds in general, or by fear of trauma itself. But this too is untrue; as the experience of wars teaches, such lesions have never been seen in soldiers who had been deeply shaken by directly witnessing wounds in their comrades; nor in soldiers thrown to the ground by the displacement of air caused by an exploding shell, who believed themselves to have been struck; nor in combatants grazed by a “spent” bullet that had barely brushed them, who, without even having the courage to look at the supposedly injured part, threw themselves to the ground believing themselves gravely wounded; nor has delayed cicatrization ever been observed in wounded men who, fearing immediate return to the front, wished not to recover (when, naturally, such delay was not maintained by them).

In 1890 Babinski, and subsequently Virchow, while admitting the possibility of some hemorrhagic suffusion caused by suggestion, opposed this theory with serious arguments and rebutted the relevant literature, which in truth has more historical than scientific value, since the facts are uncertain, poorly studied, and often implausible. Indeed, all the authors who have sought to control the various phenomena through experiments based on concentration of thought and suggestion have been able to demonstrate nothing more than modifications concerning the functional state, and have never observed a genuine lesion of the tissues. Some authors have written that the stigmata depend on mystical neurosis, inasmuch as these patients regard as reality what is instead the result of hallucinations produced by their diseased brains, attributing to supernatural phenomena events that are purely pathological. The differences between genuine stigmata and these commonplace, subjective manifestations are too obvious. Other authors have attempted to maintain that the stigmata may depend on the ardent desire for martyrdom, on the eagerness to suffer like the Redeemer; but if this were so, numerous descriptions of such phenomena should be found among the neophytes of Christianity and among the fanatical flagellants of the Middle Ages, whereas this is entirely lacking. Finally, other authors have attempted to find a pathogenetic relationship and a certain similarity between the stigmata and certain manifestations that may sometimes be observed in particular diseases. In tabes dorsalis, during attacks of lightning pains, the formation of small cutaneous hemorrhages or small petechial eruptions may be observed, albeit very rarely, localized on the limbs where the intensely painful sensations are situated; in herpes zoster (“St. Anthony’s fire”), after severe neuralgic pains, groups of dark-red vesicles appear, forming along the course of a nerve trunk; in disseminated neuropathic gangrene, gangrenous plaques suddenly appear in various parts of the body. Experimentally, moreover, Tind obtained, by provoking a violent and prolonged excitation of a sensory nerve, a conspicuous vasodilation (more evident in the mucous membranes of the region, rare and barely perceptible in the skin), which could also be the site of small hemorrhages.

All these manifestations, which in truth have nothing to do with genuine stigmata, are now explained by physiopathology: this vasodilatory reaction is not the consequence of a simple reflex (indeed, it can occur even without the intervention of the nerve centres, simply by exciting the peripheral segment of a sensory nerve severed above the point of excitation), but is produced by that pheno-

phenomenon called: “antidromic vasodilator conduction of sensory fibres” (Bayliss), and is brought about by histamine, which pain releases at the level of the sensory nerve endings.

It is well known that intensely emotional states may, for various reasons and in subjects with vascular alterations or blood dyscrasias, produce epistaxis, emotional haemorrhages, cerebral haemorrhages, etc. The pathogenesis of vicarious menstruation is likewise known; finally, it is known that certain red-coloured sweats are due to chromogenic microbes or to chemical processes. All this, however, is far removed from what has been said concerning stigmata. Prof. Wunderle in fact concludes a very careful study by stating that one may, strictly speaking, admit that in certain pathological forms, in some psychopaths, and also in psychophysiology laboratories, vesicles, reddenings, vasomotor disturbances, small haemorrhages, etc. appear; nevertheless, never and in no case have lesions been produced that could resemble true stigmata. Moreover, if stigmata depended on natural forces, they would have appeared at all times, and a description of them should be found (phenomena so conspicuous and marvellous cannot escape observation) in medical literature, whereas until the 12th century stigmata were never mentioned; furthermore, even in our own day, given certain circumstances, they should constantly be observed, which in truth is not the case.

“Invisible stigmata” consist of piercings and pains localized where the visible manifestations would ordinarily appear; they may precede or follow the external manifestations; sometimes they become visible only after death. “False stigmata” have given rise to a vast literature on the subject; especially among hysterics, very many pseudo-stigmatized persons are found. Great prudence and caution are required here, because every hysteric is inclined to simulation, deceit, lying, fraud, and theatrical display, and is highly skilful in such attitudes; there are many documented cases in which these neuropaths, using pieces of glass, their nails, or nails of iron, inflicted wounds upon themselves which, however, displayed characteristics quite different from those of true stigmata. Moreover, subjects have been described who showed ecchymoses without any trauma having caused them; these are the so-called psychopathic spots, which, besides their other differences from stigmata, are scattered over the entire surface of the body; only in some rare cases (vedi soggetto di Du Prel e di Brown-Sequard) do they assume a symbolic arrangement.

In conclusion, there is reason to hold that stigmata as natural manifestations have never either been observed or experimentally produced; on the contrary, those which appear in mystics, in the fullness of their distinctive characteristics, present themselves, by their extrinsic and intrinsic features, outside all the laws governing pathophysiology and must therefore be regarded as phenomena of a preternatural order. - Vedi tav. XCII.