The definition of stigmata in Christianity has been largely understood and explained in relation to the various accounts of Francis of Assisi's (d. 1226) reception of the five wounds of Christ on Mount La Verna.Footnote 1 While Francis of Assisi's stigmatization provides a key for understanding later accounts of individuals being marked with the wounds of Christ, it presents a stumbling block to comprehend more generally how the meaning of stigmata was conceived in the Middle Ages before his time. For example, Richard Trexler investigated some pre-Francis examples of stigmata. While his study provides insights to early reports of stigmatics, it only considers examples of individuals such as Dominic Loricatus (d. 1060) and Stephen of Obazine (d. 1154), who were said to bear the stigmata as a result of penitential practices. Trexler argues that these stigmata were physical marks that ascetics achieved through mortification of the flesh, demonstrating that Francis of Assisi's stigmatization was not new or unusual.Footnote 2 On the other hand, Giles Constable has unearthed dozens of illustrations of the use of the word “stigmata” before Francis's time in an examination of eleventh- and twelfth-century religious texts. His findings demonstrate that stigmata were often understood in a figurative sense of suffering rather than as a literal reflection of Christ's passion.Footnote 3 A range of usages of the term underlined a dedication on the part of devout individuals to imitate the life of Jesus as closely as possible, in what was known as the imitatio Christi movement.Footnote 4 Constable concluded that even though there were examples of stigmatics in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the case of Francis departs from previous models because it was thought to be both of a miraculous origin and an indication that Francis had followed Christ perfectly.Footnote 5
Although Constable and Trexler come to different conclusions regarding the meaning of stigmata, their overall analyses are nonetheless informed by Francis's case: Trexler in positing that all previous accounts of stigmata are indistinguishable from Francis's, Constable by positing the opposite. The present article will demonstrate that there were several types of stigmata: some that anticipate Francis and others that do not. Following closely Constable's trail, this study will also investigate the evolution of stigmatic spirituality, which is defined herein as the conceptual framework and devotional activities associated with how human beings were described as bearing the marks of Christ as expressed in Galatians 6:17.Footnote 6 Discussion will focus largely on pre-1226 material in order to show how stigmatic spirituality expressed itself before Francis of Assisi became a dominant model in the conceptualization of stigmata.Footnote 7 The sources mainly date from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but Latin biblical commentaries, chronicles, and hagiographical material from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages will be considered as well as hagiographical and homiletic sources from the early thirteenth century.
Understanding stigmata in the Christian tradition begins with its singular use in the New Testament in Paul's Letter to the Galatians 6:17: “I bear the marks (stigmata) of the Lord Jesus in my body;”Footnote 8 numerous commentaries on this verse lay the groundwork for later medieval interpretations. The examples provided in this article are just a sampling of how this text was commented upon.Footnote 9 The Christian writer Marius Victorinus (d. c. 365) composed the first Latin commentary on Galatians.Footnote 10 He explained the stigmata as having three implicit meanings that I have explicitly termed dominical, Pauline and personal stigmata. Dominical stigmata are the wounds caused by the nails and lance of the crucifixion in Christ's body; Pauline stigmata are the marks corresponding to the hardship that Paul encountered serving God; personal stigmata refer to the suffering of an individual in the face of adversity in the name of Christ:
For I bear the marks of our Lord Jesus Christ in my body, that is every passion and those which Christ sustained on the cross, his body fixed with nails and with the wound of the lance through his side, et cetera. Paul said, I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ on my body: that is, I have suffered, and when I serve Christ in the mystery, I endure Christ's mystery . . . . Paul will be with Christ as he suffers with Christ, and those things which Christ suffered, also he begins to suffer in his action of opposing adversaries. Therefore, also you ought to sustain many and all adversities because he will be with Christ who suffers with Christ . . . . From this example it is evident, that whatever Paul suffers the more he merits Christ, and thus we ought to suffer if we wish to be with Christ.Footnote 11
We shall see that the last of these, personal stigmata, takes on different hues in the Middle Ages and will be further qualified depending on the subject's participation in contemporary religious trends.
Jerome (d. 420) wrote his commentary on Galatians in 386. It has been noted for its contributions to the history of Pauline exegesis, most notable perhaps is Jerome's use of Origen's no longer extant Commentary on Galatians.Footnote 12 Jerome identifies stigmata as Pauline and defines them as the hardships the apostle enumerated in 2 Corinthians 11:25: flogging, being put in jail, beating and stoning. Jerome further defined Pauline stigmata with reference to 1 Corinthians 9:27 where Paul is described as mortifying his body so that when preaching to others, he would not be found wanting. Jerome makes reference to the Vetus Latina version of 1 Corinthians 9:27 with the phrase: macerat corpus suum, to describe Paul's castigation of his body; this Corinthian reference adds a penitential dimension to the meaning of stigmata:Footnote 13
But the one who was [2 Cor. 11:25] “flogged beyond measure, frequently in prison, was beaten three times with rods, was once stoned,” and who suffered all the other things that are written in his catalogue of glorying, this is the one who carries the stigmata of the Lord Jesus on his body. Perhaps also the one who [1 Cor. 9:27] “buffets his body [macerat corpus suum ] and subjects it to servitude, lest after preaching to others he may be found wanting to be rejected,” [Gal. 6:17] “bears the stigmata of the Lord Jesus on his own body.” Also the apostles rejoiced that they were worthy to suffer mistreatment for the name of Jesus.Footnote 14
Jerome, no doubt, intended his contemporaries to follow directly in the footsteps of Paul as martyr and minister for he concludes that the apostles happily suffered rough treatment for Christ.
Some medieval commentators appropriated Jerome's understanding of stigmata as a variety of tribulations suffered by Paul on behalf of Christ. For example, Bishop Atto of Vercelli in his commentary written around 960, states that Paul called “the stigmata in his body the danger of incarceration, stoning and shipwreck, and the other examples which are narrated in the catalogue of his virtue.”Footnote 15 Atto and other exegetes were likely influenced by the biblical commentator Rabanus Maurus (d. 856), who used Jerome's definition of stigmata as meaning the tribulations listed in 2 Corinthians 11:25.Footnote 16
Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) in his commentary of Galatians 6:17 focuses too on Pauline stigmata. He first provides a definition of what the actual term signifies. They are the signs of punishment slaves bear because they have done something wrong:
For by marks are meant the kind associated with the punishments of slaves, so that if a slave, for instance, were in fetters on account of wrongdoing, that is, an offence, or had suffered something of this kind, he might be said to have marks, and for this reason he is of a lower rank in the right to manumission.Footnote 17
Several medieval biblical commentators including Claude of Turin (fl. 810–827), Rabanus Maurus, Lanfranc of Canterbury (d. 1089), Hervé de Bourg-Dieu (d. 1150), and Peter Lombard (d. 1160) employ Augustine's literal meaning of the term stigmata as indicating the marks of a slave.Footnote 18 In late antiquity, slaves and soldiers were sometimes marked with a tattoo (stigma): slaves for misconduct such as desertion and stealing, soldiers to indicate that they were members of an army. Although Augustine does not associate the word “stigmata” explicitly with the practice of tattooing soldiers,Footnote 19 medieval commentators did use it to indicate that Paul bore the marks of a soldier of Christ.Footnote 20
Augustine also reckoned Paul bore the marks as a result of the persecution he himself originally waged against Christ; therefore, like a misbehaving slave, it was a punishment he deserved. But Paul was led to retribution, erasing his past offences against Christ; the trials he bore ultimately offered deliverance:
The Apostle thus wanted to apply the term marks to the marks of punishment, so to speak, coming from the persecution that he suffered. For he knew that this was retribution for the offence of persecuting the churches of Christ. As the Lord himself told Ananias when Ananias feared Paul as a persecutor of Christians: I will show him how much he must undergo for my name's sake (Acts 9: 16). Nevertheless, because of the forgiveness of sins for which he was baptized, all those tribulations brought him not to destruction, but to the crown of victory.Footnote 21
As with Jerome, for Augustine the focus is on the term used in relation to Paul rather than Christ. What is also significant is that the penitential aspect of bearing the stigmata brings atonement to Paul for his previous transgressions. We will see that penance and stigmata will become in the later Middle Ages a more pronounced partnership starting in monastic communities and then spreading into devout lay movements.Footnote 22
The Galatians exegesis of Victorinus, Jerome and Augustine present Paul as a role model for ministers of the Church to imitate. Paul as Christ's exemplary martyrly minister became a representative of the sacerdotal order in late antiquity, and in particular for bishops who were viewed to be in the frontline of proselytizing communities that were sometimes hostile to the minister and his message. This may explain to some degree why one of the first persons after Paul described as bearing the stigmata was Philastrius, bishop of Brescia (d. c. 397), renowned for preaching to non-Christians as well as Arians. The homily by Philastrius's episcopal successor, Gaudence of Brescia (d. c. 410) gives an account of the bishop's endeavors to convert communities and individuals:
But going around the whole of the Roman world, he [that is, Philastrius] preached the dominical word, being a qualified imitator of the Apostle Paul. Full of the Holy Spirit, he fought with such vigor of faith, not only against Gentiles and Jew, but even against all heresies and especially at that time against the raging Arian perfidy, that he was subject to beatings and he bore the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ in his body.Footnote 23
Gaudence's phrasing implies that the marks were physical rather than figurative resulting from his assertive attempts to protect and promote Christian orthodoxy, in other words, they were Pauline stigmata. Overall, the tone reflects the contemporary exegetical tradition on Galatians 6:17, that the marks were borne more in imitation of Paul rather than Christ.
By the central Middle Ages, however, while Pauline stigmata do not disappear, a shift occurs with dominical stigmata whereby the mimesis begins to be centered on Christ rather than on Paul. This is detected in consecrations associated with archiepiscopal appointments where the candidate is compared not only to Paul, but also to the wounded Christ. The hagiographer Lantbert of Deutz's description of Heribert of Cologne's archiepiscopal consecration on Christmas Eve, 999 is a case in point. Archbishop Heribert (970–1022), who worked closely with Otto III (980–1002), was eventually canonized by Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073–1085).Footnote 24 His vita, written in 1050, explains that Heribert transformed himself into a representative of Christ through the chanting of hymns, psalms and prayers at his consecration ceremony:
His mind, completely fixed upon celestial things was enflamed, his mouth was dedicated to hymns, psalms and prayer; transforming himself into those things which he would pursue as a representative of Christ, so great a priest he was that it was fitting that he possess the care of his congregation.Footnote 25
The culmination of this ceremony was his reception of the dominical wounds: “He was anointed by the suffragans in the chrism of the principal oil. He was wreathed with ecclesiastical betrothal in the dowry of the Catholic faith; the stigmata of Jesus were accomplished canonically on his whole body.”Footnote 26 The union of the archbishop with Jesus resonates with language normally associated with the bridal imagery found in monastic exegesis on the Song of Songs that celebrates the soul's union with the Bridegroom.Footnote 27 However, the transformation of Heribert into a Christ-like figure underlines his significant sacerdotal role. This is a compelling array of images conceiving the sacerdotal identity at once as spouse and Christ; in some respects the imagery anticipates aspects of the Gregorian reform that viewed both the Church and the clergy as bride of Christ.Footnote 28
The discussion of Heribert bearing the dominical wounds may be partially explained by the pallium, a stole decorated with crosses and worn around the shoulders and chest of archbishops at their anointment. The pope bestowed the recipient with this liturgical garment. For example, in the year 1057, Pope Victor II (1055–57) sent the pallium to Viminien, archbishop of Embrun (1055–65), along with a letter which portrayed the archiepiscopal garment as stigmata:Footnote 29
Hereafter, we want you to use the holy pallium so that you diligently and vigilantly weigh carefully what responsibility you are taking on; the pallium's use, among other things, is that by crucifying your flesh against vices and carnal desires you may bear, along with Paul, the stigmata of Christ and always carry his mortification on your breast and shoulders.Footnote 30
Here Paul remains a model to follow because Archbishop Viminien is described as bearing the marks of Christ “along with Paul”. But ultimately it is not Paul's hardships which the stigmata represent, but Viminien's bearing of Christ's own mortification. This focus on Christ's Passion, which sees the emergence of dominical stigmata as an ideal to aspire to, marks the rise of the imitatio Christi movement as a persuasive and far-reaching devotional trend where individuals strove to reflect the likeness of Jesus in their everyday lives.Footnote 31 In this case, dominical stigmata borne on the body of ministers was a form of personal stigmata for the priestly order.
This connection between Christ's wounds and the sacerdotal order was articulated by the religious reformer Peter Damian (1000–72) in his Letter 59 to Alfanus, archbishop of Salerno. Of the 180 edited letters of Peter Damian sixty-five are considered short treatises (opusculi) due to their length and focus on particular theological and ecclesiastical matters. Written after 1058, Letter 59 is one of his sixty-five opusculi; it outlines the extraordinary duties of the episcopate.Footnote 32 When the bishop's hands and head are anointed he “must therefore see to it that his head is consecrated by views that reflect his holy purpose, and that his hands be anointed with spiritual chrism by evident proofs of good works.”Footnote 33 The bishop must be above reproach and free from any spot of scandal: “That a bishop might surpass all others in possessing such purity, he should strive to bear the stigmata of Christ's blood, as the Apostle says, ‘I bear the marks of Jesus forever branded on my body.’”Footnote 34 Peter then compares episcopal stigmata to the ritual markings of a priest as described in Leviticus 8:23 where the blood of the slaughtered ram is put on the priest's right ear, hand and foot. In a like manner, the bishop bears blood on his ear when he eagerly listens to the mystery of Christ's passion, on his right hand when he performs good works, on his right foot when he stamps out evil while meditating on Christ's passion.Footnote 35
Notably, this is an early instance where the words stigmata and blood are overtly associated. This was not always the case. Caroline Walker Bynum in her study of blood in the Middle Ages has pointed out that “crucifixion is not a bloody death.”Footnote 36 In fact, in regard to the passion of Christ, there are few biblical allusions to Jesus of Nazareth and blood. Luke 22:43–44 mentions Jesus sweating blood on the Mount of Olives. In regard to the crucifixion itself, it is in the Gospel of John (John 19:34) where Jesus’ side is pierced and then blood and water flow out. Furthermore, when Paul describes himself as bearing the stigmata of Christ in Galatians 6:17, the only time the term is used in the New Testament, here again, no explicit mention of blood is made. Thus, the marriage of blood and stigmata in Letter 59 is innovative. According to Peter, the bishop sacramentally marked with Christ's blood on his hands and feet is empowered to fight on behalf of his flock. The sacerdotal significance of this type of stigmata presents the anointment of sacrificial blood on the priest's body as stigmata in their own right, that is the putting on of Christ's blood is unique to those taking on holy orders. Here, in addition to stigmata indicating Christ's own wounds and the trials and tribulations that Paul bore on behalf of Christ, sacerdotal stigmata represent the purity and power of the priest purged in the blood of Christ. Furthermore, the development of discussing the stigmata in the context of ritual marking might reflect trends in the Gregorian reform which emphasized ecclesiastical ordination over lay investiture.Footnote 37 The marks of Christ's on the clergy could only be bestowed by the Church, a type of anointment by sacred blood.
The eleventh-century inclination to tie stigmata to rituals of ordination anticipates the twelfth-century Parisian theologian, Peter Comestor (d. 1178) who explicitly linked the mark (character) of the priest with the stigmata. He expressed this in his sermon on the dedication of a church, when he compares the sacrament of holy orders to the consecration of a church building:
This inscription was made on our bodies, for you bear the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ on your body. For the mark of the character was impressed on you, whereby the distinction of your order is easily evident to the eye. Indeed the tonsure of the hair, the lowliness and purity of your clothes, the dry sobriety of your food, and your motion, step and gesture and your composed demeanor, and other things in this way are inscriptions impressed upon you and the sign of your Lord, as you are able to say: “He set a sign on my face so that I might admit no lover except him.”Footnote 38
The sacrament of holy ordination “impresses” the priestly character onto the minister and in this way the person bears the stigmata internally.Footnote 39 The sacerdotal character, however, may be exhibited externally by the priest's comportment and outward dress. For example, the idea of linking tonsure with stigmata is found in Bede, Historia ecclesiastica.Footnote 40 Sometimes episcopal dress was indicated by the term stigma as we see in the eleventh-century miracle collection Miracula Sancti Benedicti that describes “a certain man with the marked dignity (stigma) of episcopal attire.”Footnote 41 Peter Comestor shows the influence of Peter Lombard (d. 1160) on his definition of character. The Lombard posited in his Sentences that ordination bestowed the recipient with a special mark:
But if it were asked what it is that here is called an order, it may be said that it is some mark (character), that is, something sacred, by which spiritual power and office are granted to the one ordained. And so the spiritual character, when a promotion of power is made, is called an order or degree.Footnote 42
Although ordination was the territory of male clerics, in the eleventh century Peter Damian, as expressed in one of his letters, opened up the possibility of women bearing the marks of the stigmata. On the one hand this is a surprising development as Peter Damian directed a great deal of his reforming zeal against the wives of priests.Footnote 43 On the other hand, the letter written in 1066 was not directed to a priest's wife, but to a nun of Milan, the former Countess Blanche. The lengthy letter, another of his opusculi, explicates the devotional life of the nun as bride of Christ.Footnote 44 Peter Damian expressed equal opportunity for salvific perfection regarding the monastic profession. His letter to Blanche is the first theological discussion of a woman's relation to the stigmata.Footnote 45 He celebrates the union of this new nun with Christ as a blissful marriage with numerous references to the Song of Songs. In one instance Peter recalls Song 8:6, “Set me like a seal on your heart, like a seal on your arm”, whereby Christ seeing his seal on his bride, will recognize his beloved. The holy soul is signed with Christ's character (Christi caractere) on both the arm and heart. If it is marked on the heart it will be enflamed from its very depths with Christ's love. If the seal is on the soul's arm it will carry out good works.Footnote 46 The seal is described as the stigmata:
Paul had placed Jesus as a seal on his body, as it were, on his arm, since he said, “I bear the marks (stigmata) of Jesus on my body.” As he bore Christ's marks impressed on his body, so too he could rejoice to have his seal on his heart.Footnote 47
The celestial spouse puts the seal on his chosen one: “The heavenly bridegroom, moreover, sets his seal on each of the elect, and is pleased in turn to take notice of it as not to forget him.”Footnote 48 Peter also discusses the motif that is later picked up by Bernard of Clairvaux and others, that is, the reading of Song 2:13–14: “My dove in the cleft of the rocks,” as representing the wounds of Christ.Footnote 49
Throughout this section of the letter Peter makes a link between the nun's vow and the priest's vocation. He compares the cleric, who sets off on the ecclesiastical ladder in order to reach the apex of the grades in sacerdotal ordination, to the virgin, who gives herself to Christ in order to achieve union with her creator.Footnote 50 Although not as overt as the language used in sacerdotal ordination, the language Peter employs, nonetheless, pushes the nun in the general direction of stigmatic spirituality.Footnote 51 The woman who becomes a nun is marked with a character of Christ which will make her recognizable by her Beloved. Peter's use of the term “character” does not hold the force that it will from the twelfth century onward as seen in the aforementioned example of Peter Comestor when it came to be associated more strictly with sacerdotal ordination, and in particular with the power of confecting the bread and wine into the body of Christ. Before the twelfth century, character was associated more with vocation, and in the case of Blanche, she was signed with the “character of Christ” in her adoption of the monastic life.Footnote 52
We see that Peter Damian developed the idea of personal stigmata in relation to sacerdotal and monastic vocations. The person in the sacerdotal order was viewed as the priest bearing the blood of Christ on his body, which in turn enabled him to carry out his duties. In regard to those following the monastic profession, Peter Damian likened a seal to stigmata that marked the individual with a particular character and enkindled that person with love for God so that he or she would be recognized by the Bridegroom.Footnote 53 Peter's stigmatic theology will have resonances in the later understanding of Francis of Assisi's five wounds being like a divine seal received through a burning love for Christ.Footnote 54 It also clarifies, to some degree, the invisible stigmata of Catherine of Siena (d. 1380), which were visible only to her and Christ, a concept similar to the nun's Christi caractere recognized by the Bridegroom.Footnote 55 But what is most significant is that Peter discusses the stigmata in regard to the ecclesiastical roles that individuals, be they priests, monks or nuns, adopted in their attempts to be closer to Christ.
Peter Damian, however, offered another way to understand the nature of stigmata. He used the term to describe the telling marks of sanctity achieved through physical mortification, a personal stigmata accomplished through penitential acts. In this case as with Blanche, the marks were achieved within a monastic context, but in addition Peter placed a heavy emphasis on bodily mortification.Footnote 56 This type of stigmata is found in his account of the life of Dominic Loricatus (d. 1060), a Camaldolese monk who lived in Peter's monastic community.Footnote 57 Dominic's life was a model for Peter to promote regarding religious reform, and in particular monastic renewal. Dominic rejected his priestly vocation that his father secured for him through simony. Peter reports that Dominic became an eremitical monk and remained a virgin until his death.Footnote 58 Dominic's life was one of self-inflicted bodily mortification to achieve spiritual perfection. Peter writes: “His whole appearance seemed to be so beaten with scourges and so covered with livid welts, as if he had been bruised like barley in a mortar.”Footnote 59 Dominic's wounds of asceticism and self-denial are equated with Christ's: “Our Dominic, however, bore in his body the stigmata of Jesus, and fixed the sign of the cross not only on his forehead, but printed it on every part of his body … His whole life was for him a Good Friday crucifixion.”Footnote 60 Peter reintroduces and actively develops Jerome's idea of penitential stigmata. But in an eleventh-century context the wounds inflicted were thought to reflect dominical suffering not Pauline. Dominic's practices are best understood within the imitatio Christi movement which had clearly become an ideal among monastic communities.
The monastic life presented the opportunity to “bear the stigmata” where one could imitate Christ most effectively. Peter makes this clear in a letter to his nephew Marinus who had recently become a monk. Encouraging Marinus to be a successful religious, Peter likens monks to being in the army of God who must be prepared to undergo spiritual combat;Footnote 61 the sure way to conquer the battle with the flesh is through fasting, vigils, and chastity. With these weapons, the body is protected from evil temptations. Through taming the body and embracing the virtues in life, in death the individual will be recognized by Christ as someone who followed him and thus in his likeness merits eternal life:
Subduing all your own desires, like the Apostle gird yourself at all times with the sufferings of Christ, and always show that you bear the stigmata of the cross so that the more closely you now follow in the footsteps of him who was sentenced to death, the more eminently you may enjoy his company when he comes as your judge.Footnote 62
Peter writes to another relative, his nephew, Damianus, who had adopted the monastic life. This letter employs similar imagery to that found in his epistle to Marinus:
Paint this sign [that is, the Cross] on your life, dearest son, as if on your forehead; also imprint it no less on the threshold of your heart, so that when the avenging angel perceives this he will not delay to pass over without causing your injury. Let these phylacteries hang before your eyes without cease, let these marks brand your body on every side, just as the apostle testified concerning himself: “I,” he said, “bear the marks of Jesus in my body.”Footnote 63
Though varied, each of Peter's conceptualizations of the stigmata emphasizes how the individual could bring about a transformation of self based on a commitment to asceticism and service to God.
Thus far, the examples of visible stigmata being carried on the body included the symbols of a sacerdotal vow indicated by one's dress and demeanor or they were the scars one received out of devotion to Christ through persecution or self-mortification. However, in the early and central Middle Ages there were cases of stigmata described as crosses reported to have been visibly impressed miraculously upon dead bodies in the early and central Middle Ages. Bishop Ansbert of Rouen (d. 695) is an important example. After his body was translated to the monastery of Fontanelle, witnesses claimed the following:
When they had opened his tomb and they thought his body would stink because of the amount of time that had elapsed since it had been buried, such a sweet fragrant odor like a diversity of flowers flowed forth and the whole church was filled with little drops of balsam. And when the brothers who had come to see him from the neighboring province … removed the clothes in which he had been buried because they wanted to change them wishing to dress him in new clothes, they found on his forearms the sign of the dominical cross, bearing the likeness of a red color. It was evident to all the faithful that this was given to be understood that while he lived he bore the arms of Christ in his heart, therefore, Christ's stigmata were revealed on the body of the dead man.Footnote 64
The significance of this early medieval illustration of the miraculous appearance of stigmata is likely tied to the understanding that the outward aspect of a dead body was sometimes read for evidence of salvation.Footnote 65 In the Gelasian Sacramentary, which likely reflects the death ritual familiar to Ansbert and his contemporaries, death was viewed as a passage from and a return to the creator.Footnote 66 The dead body was to be washed and dressed for burial which represented the individual being cleansed in the fountain of eternal life and clothed anew in heavenly garb in the hopes of seeing God face to face. Throughout the Gelasian Sacramentary numerous references are made to the “prima resurrectio,” a term found in Apocalypse 20:5–6. In the Gelasian Sacramentary “prima resurrectio” indicated the belief that the souls of the just immediately entered heaven, and on the Day of Judgment the second resurrection would occur when the body would arise and unite with the soul.Footnote 67 Pope Gregory the Great (r. 590–604) writing on the resurrection of the soul, helped establish the notion of a double resurrection in the early Middle Ages. He articulated this idea in his Dialogues:
Whereas now their souls be only in heaven, at the day of judgment this further increase of joy shall they have, that their bodies also shall be partakers of eternal bliss, and they shall in their flesh receive joy: in which, for Christ's sake, they suffered grief and torments. In respect of this their double glory, the scripture saith: In their land, they shall possess double things; [Isa. 61:7.] and it is written of the souls of the just, that, before the day of resurrection: To every one of them white stoles were given; and it was said to them: that they should rest yet a little time, until the number of their fellow-servants and brethren were complete. [Rev. 6:11] They, therefore, that now receive but one stole, in the day of judgment shall every one have two: because now they rejoice only for the felicity of their souls, but then shall they enjoy the endless glory of body and soul together.Footnote 68
The very marks of the stigmata on Ansbert's body gave evidence of a first resurrection for Ansbert's soul: “And by the angelic chorus his holy soul, generous and sincere and pure from all worldly contact, was accepted into the happy community of the saints.”Footnote 69
If the dead body was viewed as a sort of litmus test for saintly status, signs on the corpse could indicate the fate of the individual's soul in the afterlife, a type of eschatological stigmata. Peter Damian's account of an oblate who in later life deserted the Fonte Avellana hermitage to marry, provides another example of this sort of stigmata. The fugitive became ill and when close to death he returned to the monastery to seek forgiveness. In a vision he was beaten by Saints Andrew and Gregory.Footnote 70 He died shortly thereafter and on his dead body the marks of the miraculous scourging appeared on his limbs: sure proof that he had been redeemed through his contrition.Footnote 71
These early accounts of eschatological stigmata anticipate the examples of crusaders found with the marks of the cross on their corpses.Footnote 72 In his famous sermon at Clermont to rally troops for the First Crusade, Pope Urban II (1088–1099) called upon individuals to take up the cross and sew it onto their clothing. Crusading chronicles, however, described some crusaders as actually bearing the marks not only on their cloths but on their skin.Footnote 73 Fulcher of Chartres described the recovered bodies of crusaders who had been drowned in a shipwreck in 1097 as having the crosses marked (cruces insignitae) on the flesh of their shoulders.Footnote 74 Fulcher concludes that the crosses marked on the flesh of the dead indicated that they were already in heaven enjoying eternal life: “At the same time it was also proper that such a miracle should show those who witnessed it that the dead had now attained by the mercy of God the peace of eternal life.”Footnote 75 In a few cases the marks appeared on the living bodies of crusaders in a miraculous way as in the chronicle of the First Crusade by Ekkehard of Aura (d. 1126). He reported that “the sign of the cross” (crucis signaculum) was “divinely impressed” (divinitus impressum) on the foreheads of would-be crusaders and on other parts of their bodies. These men read the impressions as a divine message that they should go on crusade.Footnote 76
Both Fulcher and Ekkehard do not call the impressed marks “stigmata,” they refer to them as “crosses.” Regardless of the name, the effect of the crosses is the same as the stigmata found on Ansbert and the repentant oblate: they are indications of salvation and/or acceptance by God, whether in the guise of crosses or welts. This should not be surprising as an interchangeableness existed between the Cross and Christ's wounds—both had salvific meaning. A connection between the symbol of the Cross and Christ's wounds is found as early as the Frankish period when Venantius Fortunatus (d.c. 603) wrote his hymns on the Exaltation of the Cross. In these hymns the divine wounds and the Cross both allude to the saving grace of Christ.Footnote 77 The Benedictine abbot, Godfrey of Admont (d. 1165), in a sermon on the Exaltation of Cross, explicitly shows how the stigmata and the Cross were seen as comparable symbols representing the path to salvation:
But truly, they who correctly venerate the memory of the life-giving Cross and worship it, they who through abstinence of life are the imitators of it, who crucify their flesh along with sin and carnal desires, they bear the stigmata of the crucified Lord on their bodies, on their members they publicize continually his cross. And let us strive to be imitators of this in some small way by correcting ourselves through fear of the Lord, I say, by always remembering to affix our bodies to that same Cross. But the imprints of the nails are spiritual disciplines to which we ought to affix securely our bodily senses, namely sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, all our members [we ought to affix] completely, lest we succumb to sin.Footnote 78
Not only does Godfrey's sermon demonstrate how the sign of the Cross and the stigmata were symbolically one, but it indicates devotional trends of the twelfth century in which individuals endeavored to experience the affective and sensual aspects of the passion through a virtuous and ascetic life.Footnote 79 Indeed, the idea of crucifixion by virtue, and in particular by the personification of caritas, who pierces Christ's heart with a spear, became a topos found in various monastic texts and images from the twelfth century onwards.Footnote 80
The Cistercian abbot Guerric of Igny (d. 1157), in his second sermon for Palm Sunday, employs the topos of the crucifying virtues by evoking the sense that the monk bears the marks of the Lord through the crucifixion of the flesh by rejecting vices and pursuing virtues.Footnote 81 Quoting Galatians 5:24: “those who belong to Christ have crucified their flesh together with its vices and evil desires,” Guerric encourages the monk to be a true warrior like Paul, who bore the stigmata of the Crucified on his own body.Footnote 82 In this regard, Pauline stigmata are invoked, but the ultimate focus is on Christ's Passion. Guerric employs a burst of intense images to center the monk's mind on how this castigation can be effected through asceticism. The body is purified though fear of God (cfr 2 Corinthians 7:1) which is presented as nails pounded into the flesh affixing the monk to the cross. The seeming contradiction of the brutality of the virtues, such as fear of God, hammering carnal vices leads the monk to conqueror sin.Footnote 83 The interior virtues ultimately destroy all sin which is witnessed in the holy life of the monk.
The emphasis on the exterior and interior transformation of the monk who contemplates the passion and its relation to the crucifixion is explicitly discussed by another Cistercian, Caeasarius of Heisterbach, (d. 1240), a monk whose responsibility was the education of novices and conversi.Footnote 84 His role as educator of the newly indoctrinated is typified in his Dialogus miraculorum, which he composed in 1223.Footnote 85 Through the conversations of a novice and master, which are presented in a series of imaginative exempla, the reader is introduced to key religious subjects: conversion, contrition, confession, temptation, demons, simplicity, the virgin Mary, visions, the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, miracles, the dying, punishment, and the glory of the dead.
In his chapter on visions, Caesarius describes a psychosomatic connection between meditation and the outer person and the crucifixion. A certain novice while contemplating the passion of Christ suddenly felt the impression of the cross on his forehead.Footnote 86 This connection between meditation upon an idea or image which influences the physical transformation of the body has resonances with a later thirteenth-century explanation of how Francis of Assisi was believed to be stigmatized: through an ardent imagining of the passion of Christ he was imprinted with the five wounds, a psychosomatic stigmata.Footnote 87
Caesarius writings mark a development in stigmatic spirituality as an articulated ideal of conformity to Christ through ascetic practices. The personal stigmata is clearly overlaid with monastic and penitential qualities. This is seen in an exemplum dealing with the Cistercian monastery of Lucka, Germany. One evening a Cistercian lay brother looking up into the night sky sees a vision of Christ-crucified, surrounded by fifteen men crucified all on their own crosses; the monk recognizes them as his contemporaries: ten fellow monks and five lay brothers from Lucka. The lay brother's confusion at what the image meant is removed when Christ calls from his cross: “These alone of all the community are crucified with me, because their life is conformed to my passion.”Footnote 88 The Cistercian master further clarifies the vision by indicating that the men were crucified through obedience, patience, humility, and the renunciation of private property and of their will. These five things make the men “like martyrs”.Footnote 89 Caesarius posits that those who crucify themselves on the Cross, fight off vice with the three nails which are the virtues of obedience, patience and humility. They also crucify their outer flesh through asceticism and their interior person through compassion.Footnote 90
The metaphorical and symbolic crucifixion of the Cross was about to take on a more visceral and literal quality in the early thirteenth century at the Cistercian abbey of Villers where Caeasarius happened to spend a short time in his capacity as educator of novices.Footnote 91 This monastery located in Brabant witnessed extreme asceticism practiced by a number of monks and lay brothers (conversi). We know of their activities through the Chronica Villariensis Monasterii, the Gesta Sanctorum Villariensium and various vitae related to the holy men of Villers.Footnote 92 The intense physical harshness practiced by monks and brothers flourished especially from the late twelfth century until about 1240. The nature of some of their severe ascetic practices is best described as penitential stigmata. This is witnessed with Peter, a conversus at Villers. Although his dates are not clearly established, his radical asceticism and experience of visions and conversations with Mary and Jesus have resonances with accounts of other Villers monks and conversi who flourished in the late twelfth and first half of the thirteenth century.Footnote 93 During Lent, wanting to do more than fast on only bread and water, he would daily lacerate his flesh with pincers. He would also use a hot iron so that from head to toe he was covered with wounds. Furthermore, he would put horse hairs into a side wound near his heart to prevent it from healing quickly. His most unusual mortification was self-crucifixion.Footnote 94 The jarring practices of Peter presented by his hagiographer may explain why he has received scant attention in modern day scholarship. The Bollandists in a summary of Peter's life contained in Iohannis Gilemans’ Novale Sanctorum (c. 1494) do not mention this unusual form of penance. Rather, they state that the chapter on Peter contains nothing worthy of note: “Integrum caput de fratre Petro quod ceterique nihil continet notatu dignum.” Footnote 95 Nonetheless, his vita, which remains unedited, contextualizes his self-crucifixion within a theological framework.
In one of the many conversations Peter has with Jesus, the Lord explains to Peter that the Crucifixion made human redemption possible but it did not effect it. Therefore, like Paul the Apostle, Jesus wanted Peter “to fill up” in his flesh what was lacking in Christ's affliction (cfr Col. 1:14) so that he might see the removal of sin.Footnote 96 Peter interprets this conversation literally, and, in an attempt at redemption, he inflicts himself with the same wounds that Christ suffered. His hagiographer reports that Peter's self-inflicted wounds, quickly healed with little scarring because his brutal deliverance was done out of love.Footnote 97
Self-crucifixion was by no means common, but it also was not unheard of in the early thirteenth century. However, unlike the hagiographer of Peter's vita who saw his action as saintly, other accounts of this practice did not view it in the same way. The Council of Oxford, which met in 1222, examined the case of a man who inflicted himself with the five wounds of Christ. Unlike those who thought Peter the Conversus was saintly, the judges of the self-crucifier in Oxford did not see such actions as a form of imitatio Christi, but as a crime for which he was duly punished.Footnote 98 Similarly, the renowned preacher Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240) wrote about a “simple lay man” who crucified himself on Good Friday. After being duped by a demon dressed as an angel who told the layman to self-crucify in order to suffer for Christ who suffered for him,Footnote 99 the layman was found half dead on a crucifix by some shepherds. The man survived with scarcely any trace of the wounds appearing on the his body (vestigia volnerum vix apparuerunt in eo), just as with Peter the Conversus.Footnote 100
Not surprisingly, self-crucifixion as a form of bearing the stigmata to expiate sin did not become a trend. Nevertheless, extreme forms of bodily mortification were employed as a way of “bearing the stigmata” in the medieval religious quest for imitatio Christi. Jacques de Vitry provides an example of such a case in the person of his spiritual mother, Mary of Oignies (d. 1213). Mary was a lay woman from Nivelles, a town about 20 kilometers east of Villers.Footnote 101 She was particularly attracted to the Cistercian way of life, and in turn the monks of Villers commended her to memory in the early thirteenth century by writing an office for her to be preformed in their liturgy.Footnote 102
Her spiritual practices have strong resonances with Peter the Conversus from Villers. In his 1213 vita of her, Jacques de Vitry relates how she once experienced such an aversion to her own flesh that she hacked a piece off when comparing it to the sweetness of the “Paschal lamb”. As with his descriptions of the layman from Huy, Jacques de Vitry does not explicitly call Mary's marks stigmata, but refers to them as wounds (vulnera). However, later in the vita, the reaction of those who prepared the corpse of Mary of Oignies for burial harkens back to Ansbert and the crusaders whose bodies were found with eschatological stigmata: “When in death her body was washed, the women found the places of the wounds and were amazed, but those who had known of this event through her confession understood what the scars were.”Footnote 103 Jacques de Vitry indicates that he knows how Mary's wounds came to be, they were not miraculous, that is, they were not eschatological stigmata, as the women who prepared her body may have thought. Nonetheless they were earned through extreme asceticism. What Mary had done was a holy action because it was executed while she was in a sort of ecstasy with a Seraph standing nearby.Footnote 104 (Francis of Assisi would later be described as stigmatized in the presence of a Seraph.)Footnote 105 However, Jacques de Vitry did not perceive extreme asceticism as an ideal of imitable sanctity. He argues that even if individuals were supposed “to bear the stigmata” on their bodies, there was a limit:Footnote 106 “The poor flesh should not be deprived of necessary things, although vices are to be checked.”Footnote 107
The accounts of the conversus of Villers, the self-crucifier of Oxford, Mary of Oignies, and the man from Huy underline a developing inclination in the early thirteenth century among the laity regarding the enactment of the imitatio Christi. It was a portrayal sometimes lacking allegorical nuance but full of literal meaning: the Christ-like marks of suffering in the bodies of lay people communicated at once a palpable imitation of the divine and tactile evidence of salvation. Furthermore, the association of Mary of Oignies with stigmata is a noteworthy case for despite the great attention that Francis of Assisi would receive as a model stigmatic, from the thirteenth century onward, the reception of the wounds of Christ were to be understood as a largely female phenomenon.Footnote 108 Indeed, preliminary studies point to a larger portion of more women bearing the stigmata than men in the later Middle Ages.Footnote 109 Part of the explanation may be found in the somatic emphasis that came to define a considerable portion of late medieval female spirituality. As identified and analyzed by Caroline Walker Bynum in her various studies of gender and medieval religion, the rituals of bodily mortification and of female spiritual were often associated with Christ's humanity, and in particular his suffering flesh.Footnote 110 In this context, stigmatic spirituality could be seen as the apex of the somatic devotion among women. The presence of a few male stigmatics in the later Middle Ages, however, is all the more interesting in the sea of female examples. But these points take us beyond the chronological range of the present study.Footnote 111
The modalities of stigmata show that from its earliest manifestation, stigmatic spirituality encouraged mimesis on the part of the individual to either conform oneself to the Apostle Paul in his willingness to suffer in order to spread Christian teaching, or to conform oneself directly to the wounded Christ. The marks could be achieved in a variety of ways: through sacerdotal consecration; preaching and teaching in the face of adversity; becoming a monk or nun; crusading; penance; and extreme asceticism. Peter Damian played a key role in providing the language and concepts that articulated a theological comprehension of what it meant to bear the stigmata. His theories were framed around eleventh-century reforming ideals which promoted an adoption of a religious vocation in order to approach Christ more perfectly through prayer and penitential behavior. By the early thirteenth century, the strict asceticism of monasticism was transformed into something altogether more radical by the laity whereby the imitatio Christi movement led some fervent individuals to associate themselves literally with the wounds of Christ to the point of self wounding. On the eve of Francis of Assisi's stigmatization, the examples discussed here demonstrate that exceptionally devout people believed that a personal imitation of the Passion could ultimately bring Christ to recognize in his earthly brothers and sisters not only a repentant sinner but a reflection of himself.
