The Stigmata: Proof of the Existence of God?
Created | Updated Apr 3, 2004
The stigmata are basically wounds that appear on people, in the places where the wounds of Jesus following the crucifixion were said to be. The first recorded instance of their occurrence is on the body of St Francis of Assisi, in 1224, following an ecstatic vision of Christ on the cross he had at La Verna. Various people since have also received them, including the recently canonised Franciscan friar Padre Pio de Pietrelcine. There are usually five wounds, which tend to appear on the hands, feet, and side, consistent with the traditional image of Jesus post-crucifixion, although sometimes only the hands are afflicted. The wounds also tend to bleed uncontrollably (Padre Pio had to change his dressings at least five times a day). Such wounds are clearly open to large religious interpretation, being seen as a sign from God, and as they are clearly visible to all, and physically present, it is at least impossible to debate their existence, if not their origin.
It is therefore their origin which is the debate. Are the stigmata a sign from God, or a self-induced incident?
The idea of a sign from God has been largely dismissed, as no attested case of stigmata has ever been found on someone who was not a Christian believer. Whilst it could be argued that God would not bestow them on a non-believer, it could conversely be argued that only believers receive the stigmata, as they are so devout in their belief, that they suffer from auto-suggestion, where as a result of hysteria and subconscious submission, their belief in the wounds of Christ leads to the body creating wounds, damaging itself in much the same way as it is able to heal itself. This idea is certainly borne out over the idea of a gift from God by the fact that archaeological evidence shows that victims of crucifixion would not have been nailed through the hands, as this method would have been unable to support them on a cross. The nails would instead have been passed through a small gap in the wrist bones. Traditional depictions of the crucifixion, however, detail the wounds on the hands, and that the stigmata appear there suggests that they are the result of belief based on the common misconception over the placement of the nails, as opposed to divine intervention, as we can presume that God would place the wounds where they actually occurred on Jesus. Such idea of auto-suggestion could be held to count as the wounds being self-induced, certainly more so than the idea that they were physically inflicted. In 1952, Thurston1 stated that of the hundreds of reported cases of stigmata, only approximately fifty could be proven to be genuine. Thouless2 had earlier claimed that even in seemingly genuine cases, a two-fold argument could be made against any religious interpretation of them. He argued that not only were the stigmata almost unheard of until the prominence given to them by St Francis led to an influx of auto-suggested cases, but also that many subjects of them had indications of hysterical conditions, making them more suggestible. It should also be noted that many instances of stigmata are to be found within the Franciscan order3 , based on St Francis. It would therefore be expected that Franciscans’ belief in the stigmata would be particularly devout, so it is of little surprise that the stigmata is relatively common amongst them.
We can see then that in genuine cases, the stigmata are physical wounds that are not physically inflicted, which tend to affect devout Christian believers. That their presence is undeniable, and that they can be proven not to have been inflicted by an outside influence suggests them to be a religious sign from God, and to many they are seen as such. It has, however, been pointed out that recipients of the stigmata tend to be particularly open to auto-suggestion, and a strong belief could lead them to develop wounds caused by their body, in much the same way that the placebo effect4 can heal wounds. That the wounds develop where the subject believes them to be as supposed to where they actually were seems to conclude the issue, that stigmata are the result of self-induced, though not necessarily consciously, rather than the result of divine intervention.
1THURSTON, H. The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism (1952)2THOULESS, R. H. An Introduction to the Psychology of Religion (1923)3E.g. Padre Pio.4A strong belief that one will recover from an illness leading to the body fighting that illness without conventional medical treatment being undertaken.
