The subject of this book is not the wider category of those who received, or who claimed to have received, the stigmata. It is specifically focused on the discourses, verbal and visual, that surrounded the figure of the ‘stigmatic’ in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe. The title of Ted Harrison's Stigmata: a medieval mystery in a modern age (London, 1994) drew attention to the apparent distance between stigmata and contemporary life. It is the particular contribution of Van Osselaer and her collaborators to have drawn attention to the stigmatic as a modern figure. Large numbers of them appeared in countries such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain at a time when Catholicism was being questioned by rationalists and liberals, and women were widely stereotyped as exemplars of purity and fortitude. Individuals had received the stigmata in earlier centuries, notably St Francis of Assisi, but the attitude of the Church had been that this was a subsidiary feature of their spiritual heroism. The modern stigmatic, by contrast, was defined first and foremost by their mystical wounds. They owed their prominence to the operations of the modern media which reproduced their images and encouraged visitors and admirers. The Vatican was wary of stigmatics who were usually lay people. Only a few stigmatics, notably including Padre Pio, became saints. Van Osselaer is the author of The pious sex: Catholic constructions of masculinity and femininity in Belgium, c. 1800–1950 (Leuven 2013). It is, therefore, not surprising to read some interesting discussion of the reasons why the great majority of stigmatics were women but there is more to be said here. If the stigmata were so powerfully connected with women did they become a queer sign when they appeared on men?

This book is the product of a European research project and reads like it. It is efficiently organised and clearly structured. It does, perhaps, shine something of a cold light on its subjects which are approached dispassionately as a social and cultural phenomenon. There is some useful discussion of stigmatics as figures in contemporary visual culture but this needs to be contextualised in relation to the ways in which celebrity operated more widely in the society and media of the time. The volume does, however, cover its core subject in unprecedented factual detail. The ‘Biographical dictionary of stigmatics’ takes up almost half of the volume and is a valuable resource for future research in its own right. The effect of this compendium is almost hypnotic as one reads life upon life of individuals who were at one and same time extraordinary and stereotypical. When one learns that their wounds were often suspected of being self-inflicted one thinks of practices of cutting and self-harming. There are other books (not mentioned in the bibliography) which can provide assistance in exploring theological, psychological and medical interpretations of such behaviour including Ariel Glucklich, Sacred pain: hurting the body for the sake of the soul (Oxford 2001) and Cristina Mazzoni, Saint hysteria: neurosis, mysticism, and gender in European culture (Ithaca, NY 1996). So, in sum, this book is both compendious in the information that it collects on a wide range of long-forgotten individuals and somewhat narrow in its approach. Its arguments for the power of the media and of notions of popular religion, as opposed to those sanctioned by the Church's hierarchy, are compelling. It leaves space for, and will hopefully inspire, new multi-dimensional readings of these extraordinary people and their times – or, better, of times so extraordinary that they left their marks on so many ordinary bodies.