The reception of the wounds of Christ through miraculous means has always been controversial. After the death of St Francis of Assisi on 3 October 1226 a number of voices were raised doubting the miracle of the stigmata so enthusiastically proclaimed by Brother Elias, vicar general of the Franciscan Order, as unique.Footnote ¹ With Dominican promotion of Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) as a stigmatic from the end of the fourteenth century, the issue of the singularity of the miracle experienced by Francis came to the fore. Catherine's stigmata, received at the church of Santa Cristina in Pisa in 1375 and rendered invisible at her request,Footnote ² were treated with suspicion by the Franciscans, who insisted that their founder was the only true stigmatic.Footnote ³ Four centuries after the stigmatization of St Francis, and despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that an increasing number of holy women were reputed to have received the stigmata during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, members of the Franciscan Order still perceived a need to demonstrate that the miracle experienced by their founder was sui generis. In 1617 the Spanish Regular Observant Franciscan Antonio Daza (or Daça) (d. 1640) added to the writings which aimed to dispel any doubt on this front with the publication of his Historia de las llagas de nuestro seráfico padre San Francisco (The History of the Stigmata of our Seraphic Father St Francis).Footnote ⁴ During his career Daza held various posts within the order and was in Rome between 1621 and 1625 where he met the Franciscan historiographer Luke Wadding. He published on a number of subjects, including two books promoting the Immaculate Conception and the final instalment of Mark of Lisbon's chronicle of the history of the Franciscan Order, both of which demonstrate his careful search for historical sources.Footnote ⁵ Daza also wrote a life of the sixteenth-century Spanish Franciscan mystic and stigmatic Juana de la Cruz (d. 1534), the Historia, vida y milagros, éxtasis y revelaciones de la bienaventurada virgen Santa Juana de la Cruz (History, Life and Miracles, Ecstasies and Revelations of the Blessed Virgin Santa Juana de la Cruz).Footnote ⁶ This essay considers the Historia de las llagas and the Historia, vida y milagros within the context of doubt and proof relating to different stigmatic experiences.

Dominican authors were comfortable with, and indeed actively promoted, the idea of multiple types of stigmatic experience. For the Franciscans, however, that anyone other than Francis claimed to have received stigmata cast doubt on the unique miracle experienced by their founder, a miracle which had been carefully crafted in the years following Francis's death.Footnote ⁷ These opposed reactions reflect contrasting ways of dealing with the doubt engendered by miraculous stigmatization. The model used by the Dominicans was one whereby a prospective saint did and experienced things accepted as ‘saintly’. The more often often a particular type of miracle could be said to have occurred, the less doubt it attracted.Footnote ⁸ In the case of stigmata, the Dominicans allayed doubts by arguing for a broad spectrum of stigmatic experiences. The Franciscans, by contrast, focused on a model in which certain aspects of the saint's life were projected as new or unique.Footnote ⁹ The very singularity of the miracle of Francis's stigmata as promoted by the Franciscans engendered doubt, which in turn prompted Franciscan authors to support their claims through glosses on the description of the physical appearance of the stigmata as well as increasing recourse to authoritative sources, even when these were not cited accurately.

By the time that Daza wrote the Historia de la llagas it was no longer so easy to say, with Elias, that Francis's stigmata were ‘a great joy and a novelty amongst miracles’, since a number of holy women had been claimed as stigmatics. Many of these were either Dominican or closely associated with the Dominican order, such as Osanna Andreasi of Mantua (d. 1505), Stefana Quinzani of Soncino (d. 1530) and Lucia Brocardelli of Narni (d. 1544). Dominican authors writing during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries sometimes made great play of the number of stigmatics they could list, and in particular of the number of stigmatics within or attached to, the order in some way, such as through having a Dominican confessor. Miguel Llot de Ribera (d. 1611) composed a life of Maria Raggi, a Dominican tertiary originally from the island of Chios, who died in Rome in 1600, having received the stigmata in 1585; this included the names of other people who were believed to have borne the stigmata, including Lidwina of Schiedam (d. 1433), Gertrude the Great (d. 1301/1302), Elizabeth of Spalbeek (d. 1304), Stefana Quinzani, Helen of Hungary (d. c.1270), Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena.Footnote ¹⁰

Dominicans such as Tommaso Caffarini (d. 1434) in the fifteenth century and Gregorio Lombardelli (d. 1613) in the seventeenth emphasized a wide-ranging definition of stigmata which extended from wounds which were self-inflicted to those imposed through a supernatural or divine medium.Footnote ¹¹ Lombardelli defined eight different types of stigmata: those that a person inflicted on themselves with chains of iron, or with whips, or with any other type of instrument which gave cause to a wound; the second type was that received from the devil; the third that given by a religious superior; the fourth was inflicted by a heretic or enemy of the cross on someone who remained firm in the faith; the fifth that in which a wound or scar appeared miraculously without the recipient seeing God, an angel, a demon or a human being; the sixth was when the Lord, an angel, a saint or God appeared and left a sign by striking the person to whom they had appeared; the seventh type was when God, taking human form, beat someone with some kind of instrument without leaving any external sign, although the person who received the blow felt pain; and the eighth type was when Jesus Christ allowed himself to be seen in various ways in order to place his five wounds in a person's body as he, Christ, had received them.Footnote ¹² For both Caffarini and Lombardelli it was this last type of stigmata which was the most prestigious, giving greatest evidence of God's favour. Both writers were nonetheless concerned to demonstrate the variety of stigmatic experience, ranging from the non-miraculous to the miraculous, and also to show that there was no exclusivity attached to any of the types of stigmata. Lombardelli gave four examples of those who received the most noteworthy, eighth type of stigmata: Francis of Assisi, Walter of Strasbourg (d. before 1260), Helen of Hungary and Catherine of Siena.Footnote ¹³ Three of the four were Dominican: an expansion of those deemed to be stigmatics focused, for the Dominican author, on members of the order to which he belonged.

Franciscan reaction to claims that there were stigmatics other than Francis had habitually consisted of a combination of doubt, disbelief and rejection, such as that expressed by Samuele Cassini (d. after 1510) in his De le sacre stigmate de Sancto Francesco; como femina non puo hauere stigmata (On the Holy Stigmata of Saint Francis; how Women cannot have Stigmata) (Pavia, 1508).Footnote ¹⁴ Cassini claimed that God did not give stigmata to women, as he believed that their weaker nature made them unsuitable vessels for the reception of such a miracle.Footnote ¹⁵ His particular concern probably stemmed from the increasing reports of female stigmatics, far outweighing the number of males. However this was easily countered. The Spanish Dominican Vicente Justiniani (d. 1599) pointed out, in his Pro Divae Catharinae Senensis imaginibus disputatio, that there was no room for doubt since ‘with God, all things are possible’ (Matt. 19: 26) and ‘[t]here is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3: 28).Footnote ¹⁶

Against the background of increasing numbers of people claimed as stigmatics, Daza marshalled as much evidence as possible in order to dispel any doubt as to the singularity of the miracle experienced by Francis. The first chapter in the Historia de las llagas, ‘Of the great favour which God did to the world in giving to our father Saint Francis his most holy wounds’,Footnote ¹⁷ begins by detailing the pre-eminence of the miracle. According to Daza, during an ecstatic vision the Blessed Amadeus of Portugal (d. 1482), was informed by the archangel Gabriel that God could show no greater favour to Francis than that of giving him his most holy wounds.Footnote ¹⁸ Daza also observed that St Bonaventure (d. 1274) had called the reception of the stigmata ‘a stupendous miracle’; Pope Alexander IV (d. 1261) had referred to it as ‘a singular and great miracle’ and Cardinal Baronio (d. 1607) as ‘an immense miracle’; Cardinal Bellarmino (d. 1641) had insisted on its singularity and called it ‘almost the greatest of all God's miracles’; and Roberto Caracciolo of Lecce (d. 1495) had written that ‘amongst all the great miracles of the faith the stigmatization held first place’.Footnote ¹⁹ Daza lists his sources in order of rank within the Church, from archangel, to saint, pope, cardinal and (finally) bishop. He is clear that the miracle of the stigmata, as experienced by Francis, is a miracle of the highest order and also unique, a theme to which he returns throughout the Historia de las llagas. Daza also explores other aspects of Francis's stigmata, such as how he received them and their exact appearance, both of which underline the exceptional nature of the miracle. Daza's final chapter deals with the institution of the Feast of the Stigmata. This returns to a subject raised at the beginning of the work: in the section addressed to the vicar general of the order, Antonio de Trejo (d. 1635), Daza recalls the recent decision of Pope Paul V, in 1615, to allow the celebration of the Feast of St Francis's stigmata throughout the Catholic Church. The feast had originally been placed in the Roman Calendar in 1585 but had been suppressed in 1602.Footnote ²⁰

Daza's main strategy in allaying any possible doubts about the singularity and miraculous nature of Francis's stigmata is to refer to as wide a range of sources as possible. He is careful to include not only Franciscan authors, who might reasonably be expected to have supported this line of argument, but also writers who belonged to other religious orders.Footnote ²¹ So focused is Daza on his aim that he sometimes, apparently wilfully, misreads his sources.Footnote ²² One source cited by Daza is El Libro del Conhorte, which contained the sermons of Juana de la Cruz (d. 1534). Juana Vázquez Gutiérrez had entered the beaterio of Franciscan tertiaries of Santa Maria de la Cruz, just outside the village of Cubas (between Madrid and Toledo), in 1496. She became abbess in 1509.Footnote ²³ Juana benefited from the protection of Cardinal Cisneros (d. 1517), which provided her with a relatively supportive environment compared to some female Spanish mystics of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who had to deal with the effect of the reaction against the alumbrados and the religious climate after the Council of Trent.Footnote ²⁴ During a period of thirteen years from 1508 Juana delivered sermons while in a state of visionary ecstasy.Footnote ²⁵ They were collected in El Libro del Conhorte by her companion Sor María Evangelista.Footnote ²⁶ These sermones, designated as such in the first manuscript,Footnote ²⁷ were attended both by the nuns in Juana's convent, who were the primary recipients, and by supporters such as Cardinal Cisneros.Footnote ²⁸ Despite the biblical prohibitions on women teaching (particularly 1 Tim. 2: 12–13), early saints such as Mary Magdalen and Catherine of Alexandria were reputed to have converted their listeners to Christianity with the power of their words.Footnote ²⁹ Jacobus de Voragine (d. 1298), author of the widely read Legenda Aurea (Golden Legend), justified women's preaching on the basis that it was a gift given by the Holy Spirit.Footnote ³⁰ The legitimization of women's sermons by claiming the gift of prophecy or divine inspiration was a strategy commonly used by women and by their male supporters, immediately sidestepping issues of their ability to understand and explicate the word of God.Footnote ³¹

Daza, who also refers to Juana's ecstatic utterances as sermones, is clear that they were not composed by Juana herself: rather, God had struck her dumb and spoke through her, ‘sometimes every eight days, or fifteen days, other times every four days, other times every third day, other days one time after another, and some days twice, more or less, as it pleased our Lord'.Footnote ³² Mention of Francis's stigmata in ‘Juana's’ sermons thus represented direct corroboration of the miracle from God. Daza refers to Juana de la Cruz in Chapter 5 of the Historia de las llagas, which deals with how Jesus himself impressed his holy wounds on St Francis without any mediation.Footnote ³³ He quotes Juana's sermon 58, given on the Feast of St Francis:Footnote ³⁴

Juana here forms part of a long list of people, including the Dominicans St Antoninus of Florence (d. 1459) and St Vincent Ferrer (d. 1419) and the Franciscan St Bernardino of Siena (d. 1444), all of whom are brought into play as providing evidence that Christ himself impressed the stigmata on Francis. Daza returns to Juana de la Cruz in Chapter 7 of the Historia de las llagas.Footnote ³⁶ Here he first explains that God allowed Francis to descend into purgatory each year on the anniversary of his death in virtue of the wounds which Christ had given him.Footnote ³⁷ Each year Francis would be able to grant immediate salvation to some members of his order who were in purgatory. Those associated with the order could be recognized through their habit. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the Franciscan habit was favoured by many as burial clothing. Indeed, in sixteenth-century Madrid it was the most popular form of burial attire.Footnote ³⁸ According to Daza, that God had allowed Francis to free his followers from purgatory was the occasion for especial bile and scorn in Erasmus Alber's Alcoranus Franciscanorum (The Franciscan Qur’ān).Footnote ³⁹ Alber (c.1500–53), who had studied under Luther at Wittenberg, wrote this satirical work in response to the Franciscan Bartholomew of Pisa's late fourteenth-century Liber de conformitate vitae Beati Francisci ad vitam domini Iesu (Book of the Correspondence of the Life of St Francis to the Life of the Lord Jesus), which promoted St Francis as a second Christ, and which Alber used as a basis from which to attack Francis and his order.Footnote ⁴⁰ It appeared in numerous editions and languages in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.Footnote ⁴¹ For Protestants such as Alber, the power to free souls was one which should have been exercised only by God.Footnote ⁴² Luther, in his preface to the Alcoranus, had pointed out that beliefs such as this decreased the importance of Christ so that he became one amongst the prophets, as was the case in Islam.Footnote ⁴³ Albers's address to the readers, placed at the end of the Alcoranus Franciscanorum, rails against the way in which he perceived Francis to be placed above Christ, noting that, according to the Liber de conformitate, ‘Christ felt the pains of his wounds for a short time. But Francis suffered the pains of his wounds for a full two years. . . . And, to say it briefly, Christ did not do anything which Francis did not also do, and many more times.’Footnote ⁴⁴

Seeking to allay any doubts regarding Francis's ability to free certain souls from the cleansing torments of purgatory, in Chapter 7 of the Historia de las llagas Daza again appeals to El libro del Conhorte and, in particular, to Juana's sermon 58, which goes on to describe how, on the day of Francis's death each year, the heavens open and two sets of stairs appear which reach from heaven to purgatory. One set of stairs is the colour of rubies and coral whilst the other is as white as pearls. Red signifies the passion; white the purity of the Virgin. Francis and Christ descend to purgatory on these stairs. Although the two sets of stairs are clearly differentiated, the text implies that Francis and Christ descend using both. Francis greets all those souls who are wearing his habit. Only those who are able to identify both Christ and Francis are freed from the torments of purgatory.Footnote ⁴⁵ A further important aspect of sermon 58 is the repeated return to Christ's wounds and Francis's stigmata: the habit is in the shape of the cross; those who wear the habit imprint on themselves the wounds of the crucified Christ.Footnote ⁴⁶ Moreover, once St Francis has assured Christ that he will obey him as a wife obeys her husband, Christ imprints his wounds on Francis as he himself had received them on the cross.Footnote ⁴⁷ Ronald Surtz argues that both the importance and the singularity of Francis's stigmata are demonstrated when ‘the Lord emphasises that while other martyrs suffered at the hands of the infidels, Francis was martyred by God himself when he was given the stigmata’.Footnote ⁴⁸ Daza could use Juana's sermons to dispel any doubts about the pre-eminence of Francis's miraculous stigmata and stigmatization because of their authority: Christ spoke directly through Juana.Footnote ⁴⁹ He provides evidence of this by noting that, during this period, Juana was able to speak in different languages ‘of which she never had any former knowledge, especially in Latin, Arabic and others’, here appealing to another common trope when writing about religious women who advised or taught others.Footnote ⁵⁰

Despite the legitimacy established for her sermons, Juana may seem a curious choice of authority in a work aimed at dispelling doubts about the extraordinary nature of Francis's stigmata, since she herself had received painful marks on her hands and feet in 1524. According to Daza's vida, Juana had, from the time in which she first entered the convent of Santa Maria de la Cruz, imposed on herself an extremely harsh discipline which was designed to allow her to experience Christ's pain during the passion. Sometimes she would tie herself, naked, to a pillar leaving her arms free so that she could whip herself until she bled with an iron chain at the end of which she had attached a large iron ball; at other times she knelt and struck herself repeatedly on the breast with a flint so hard that the blood which spurted out reached as far as the walls of the cell. As she did this she circled the cell on her knees.Footnote ⁵¹ Daza details a number of other extremely painful practices in which Juana engaged as part of her quest to experience Christ's suffering. For example, Juana had driven some nails into a wall so that she could push her hands on to them and hang without her feet touching the ground for up to an hour.Footnote ⁵² Such penitential practices were not uncommon amongst holy women of the period. Luisa de la Ascensiòn (d. 1636) was reported to have punished her body through the wearing of iron chains.Footnote ⁵³ Catalina de Jesús y San Francisco (d. 1677) was regularly whipped on the order of her confessor.Footnote ⁵⁴ However, at the age of forty-three, on Good Friday, Juana received marks on her hand and feet in the places where Christ had been nailed to the cross. Daza recounts that she had been praying, in rapture, with her body set in the shape of a cross. Because she remained in her rapture for longer than was normal the nuns carried her into her cell and left her there so that they could go to the choir for holy office. Whilst they were there Juana entered the choir walking with great difficulty: she was leaning on the walls and allowed only her heels and her toes to touch the ground. The nuns asked to see what had happened and discovered that Juana had the signs of the crucifixion in her hands and feet. Daza describes the marks as being round, the size of a coin, and red, of the colour of fresh roses; they were like this both on the tops and soles of Juana's feet and on the backs and palms of her hands.Footnote ⁵⁵ The marks caused Juana great pain, but a fragrant smell emanated from them. In a reflection of the words spoken by the apostle Thomas (John 20: 25), the nuns saw ‘with their eyes and felt with their own hands’. Daza of course intended these words to clear away doubt for the reader of the vida. Having carried Juana back to her cell, the nuns asked how she had received the marks. She replied that her guardian angel had taken her to a place where she had seen Jesus crucified. He touched her with his wounds and left her with dreadful pains in her hands and feet, and when the vision was over she found herself in her cell with the marks which could be seen, on Fridays and Saturdays, from then until Ascension Day, when, at the time that the Lord ascended, both the pains and the marks disappeared as though they had never been there. Juana had prayed for the marks to be removed but the Lord replaced them with the pains of the passion in every part of Juana's body to a greater extent than she had ever felt them before.Footnote ⁵⁶

Daza's account of Juana's reception of the wounds claims that God gave her the ‘pains and signs of the most holy wounds’ but does not address how her experience should be interpreted in relation to Francis's stigmata.Footnote ⁵⁷ Given that Daza's later publication on the Historia de las llagas specifically aims to demonstrate the unique nature of Francis's stigmata and stigmatization, a desire to sidestep direct discussion of the issue is understandable. Responding to the question of Juana's wounds as stigmata in either the vida or the Historia de las llagas would have opened a Pandora's box of doubts in relation to the Franciscan understanding of the miracle experienced by their founder. Yet Daza appears to have been aware of the debate about different types of stigmata, since he dedicated a chapter of the Historia de las llagas to discussing the way in which Jesus gave Francis his wounds, emphasizing the lack of any intermediary, a key part of the definitions of both Caffarini and Lombardelli of the most prestigious, eighth type of stigmata.

Daza avoids the question of whether stigmata could be placed on a spectrum of stigmatic experiences, with self-inflicted marks or wounds at one extreme and Francis of Assisi's miraculously imprinted wounds at the other thus demonstrating God's greatest favour. His approach contrasts with that of Dominican writers such as Caffarini and Lombardelli, discussed above, and Luis de Granada (d. 1588), who, in the ‘Prologue’ to his Historia de Sor María de la Visitación, states that God had honoured two women from Lisbon, María de la Visitación,Footnote ⁵⁸ a member of his own order, and Ana de las Llagas, a member of the third order of St Francis, singling them out with the signs of the passion. María received the wounds of the nails and the lance, and Ana had Christ crucified sculpted over her breast and the name of Jesus on her side, made out of her own flesh.Footnote ⁵⁹ Luis de Granada was concerned to demonstrate that varying types of stigmata could be experienced by a range of holy people, in this case both Dominican and Franciscan. Juana's experience, as described by Daza, had similarities to that of contemporary or near-contemporary Dominican female stigmatics whose stigmata appeared, or became more pronounced or painful, during Holy Week or on Fridays. Francesco Silvestri described Osanna Andreasi's stigmata during Holy Week as sometimes appearing ‘rosy as though there was blood underneath the skin’.Footnote ⁶⁰ Lucia Brocadelli's stigmata bled on Wednesdays and Fridays.Footnote ⁶¹ As early as the thirteenth century the Franciscan Margherita Colonna (d. 1280) was recorded as having physical symptoms which would have been recognized as stigmata by Caffarini and Lombardelli.Footnote ⁶² Yet whilst the Dominicans acknowledged and celebrated stigmatics both within and outside their order in order to emphasize the importance of meditation on the passion, the Franciscans could not do the same without opening the door to doubts about the unique nature of Francis's stigmatization and stigmata. Nonetheless, by the early eighteenth century, just over a century after Daza had published the Historia de las llagas, the Franciscan Pietro Antonio da Venezia, in his revised and expanded version of the Leggendario Francescano authored by his co-religionist Benedetto Mazzara, was able to say, as he recounted the life of the Sicilian Poor Clare Arcangela Tardera (d. 1599), that ‘the Lord wanted to give her [Arcangela] another most singular grace and that was to imprint on her the signs of his most holy wounds’. He quickly followed this, however, by noting that Arcangela had not experienced the stigmata in the same way as St Francis had done.Footnote ⁶³

Daza could not – or at least did not – articulate this acceptance of different types of stigmata, but his description of Juana's reception of marks on her hands and feet is a tacit acknowledgement of the legitimacy of stigmatic experiences that differed in type and importance from those of St Francis of Assisi, and evidence that the existence of stigmatics such as Juana need no longer be perceived uniformly by Franciscans as casting doubt on the unique nature of their founder's stigmata. Throughout the Historia de la llagas, Daza uses his sources to argue for the singularity of Francis's stigmata, both in relation to the method in which he received them and their physical symptoms during the two years between the stigmatization and the death of the saint. To use Juana's divinely inspired sermons as corroborative evidence is consonant with the ways in which Daza uses other sources. However, to use Juana's stigmata as part of the proof that Francis had received stigmata would have gone against centuries of Franciscan thinking, as doing so might have seemed to contain a tacit acknowledgement that Francis's stigmata were not unique. Yet Daza did dwell on Juana's stigmata in the vida, and he did so in spite of the relatively recent examples of faked stigmata by a Poor Clare from Córdoba, Maria Magdalena de la Cruz (d. 1560), and the Portuguese Dominican María de la Visitación, whose fraud had been discovered in 1588.Footnote ⁶⁴ His reasons for this may lie in the papal sanction for the celebration of the Feast of the Stigmatization of St Francis throughout the Church in 1615 and the growing tide of stigmatics. The former implicitly acknowledged the primacy of Francis's stigmata and thus may have allowed some Franciscans to relax their opposition to other types. The latter was symptomatic of the importance of meditation on the passion in the lives of religious women, especially those in Spain.Footnote ⁶⁵ Holy women who received the stigmata in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain also had visions of St Francis.Footnote ⁶⁶ Against this background, it would have been increasingly difficult to deny either that women like Juana could have received physical marks in some or all of the places where Christ was wounded on the cross, or that these marks proved the influence of Francis rather than casting doubt on his stigmata. However, Juana's stigmata as described in the vida do not appear to have bled and she did not have the wound in the side. The differences between Juana's (partial) stigmata and those of Francis allowed the Franciscan claim that Francis was the only true stigmatic to stand. Nonetheless, by implicitly acknowledging Juana as a stigmatic, Daza moved closer to an acceptance, shared by some other Franciscans, that the existence of different types of stigmatic experience did not ineluctably cast doubt on the unique nature of Francis's stigmata.