Stigmata

The wounds that Christ received during the Passion and Crucifixion

STIGMATA (στίγματα, Authorized and Revised Versions ‘marks’).—The word occurs only in Gal 6:17 ‘From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus’ (Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 ). The subject of the ‘stigmata (or marks) of Jesus’ comes before us in two ways: we have to consider (1) the meaning of the word stigmata as used by St. Paul; (2) the special sense in which it has come to be employed from the time of St. Francis of Assisi and onwards, esp. in the Roman Catholic Church.

1. St. Paul’s use of the word.—(1) By the ‘stigmata of Jesus’ Bonaventura and many others have supposed the Apostle to refer to bodily marks resembling the nail prints and other insignia of the Saviour’s Passion—thus making him affirm an experience, in his own person, of the phenomena of ‘stigmatization’ (see 2). But the technical sense in which the word stigmata was used in the time of St. Paul—viz. as denoting marks of ownership (either brands made with hot irons, or cuts which, as they healed, were prevented from closing, and so became broad scars), as well as the meaning of the whole verse when considered in the light of the context and its analogies in other parts of the Apostle’s writings (esp. 2Co 11:23 ff.)—shows that Ἰησοῦ must be taken as the gen. of possession, and that the reference is not at all to the wounds on the Lord’s body, but solely to certain marks on St. Paul’s own body that stamped him as belonging to Jesus Christ.

(2) A few commentators, following Augustine (Com. on Gal., in loc.), have transformed St. Paul’s stigmata into his manifestation of the fruits of the Spirit, with special reference to his Christian asceticism (cf. 1Co 9:27). But the technical signification of stigmata, as well as the expression ‘on my body,’ seems to put such an interpretation altogether out of the question.

(3) Assuming, then, that the stigmata were marks of ownership, what is the particular figure that St. Paul means to suggest? (a) Soldiers, in honour of an adored commander, sometimes branded on their bodies the initial letter of his name. But though the idea of the Christian life as a military service is a familiar one in the Pauline writings (1Co 9:7, 2Co 10:4, 1Ti 6:12, 2Ti 4:7), it is not in keeping with the present context, which brings Jesus before us as Lord (Gal 6:14; Gal 6:17), not as Captain. (b) Slaves attached to the service of a heathen temple (ἱερόδουλοι) were branded with the names of the deities to whom they ministered; and Lightfoot (Com. on Gal., in loc.) and others (e.g. Westcott in Expos. vi. [1887] 241) have thought that the metaphor is most appropriately understood in the light of this fact. But, as Meyer pointed out (Com. in loc.), the references to the branding of ἱερόδουλοι found in Herod., I’lut., Lucian, etc., bear upon the usage of other nations, and we have no evidence for Galatia itself. Even if we had, a reference to the branding of the slaves in heathen temples would be needlessly recondite, in view of the much more familiar practice of branding domestic slaves. And, above all, as the ἱερόδουλοι were very frequently women attached to a temple for immoral purposes, it seems unlikely that the Apostle would have in his mind a term that carried associations so degrading, (c) It is most likely, therefore, that St. Paul is alluding to an ordinary domestic custom. In the East (not in Rome, where branding was the mark of a runaway slave, and so a badge of disgrace) slaves were regularly branded by their owners, and Artemidorus Daldianus bears witness to the practice in Galatia (Oneirocritica, i. 8. The verb he uses is στίζω, from which στίγμα comes. See W. M. Ramsay, Hist. Com. on Gal. pp. 84, 472, who tells us that this ancient custom is familiar even yet to the observant traveller in Turkey). St. Paul never calls himself a ἱερόδουλος, but the thought that he was the δοῦλος of Jesus Christ was one of his ruling ideas (Rom 1:1, 1Co 7:22, 2Co 4:5, Gal 1:10, Php 1:1). And when he says, ‘I bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus,’ he means certain marks that bore witness to the fact that Jesus was his Master and he was Jesus’ slave.

(4) But what were these marks that St. Paul bore branded on his body! Without doubt, he meant the scars he had earned in the service of Christ—perhaps the general signature upon his face and whole person of all his toils and trials, but, at all events, the laceration and disfigurement produced by Jewish scourges and lictors’ rods and the cruel stones of the multitude (Act 14:19; Act 16:23, 2Co 11:24-25). These marks of his servitude to his Lord the Apostle looked upon not only as a badge of honour, but (and this is his reason for referring to them here) as seals set upon his claim to be the Apostle and minister of Jesus Christ (cf. 2Co 11:23 ff.), and so as tokens of his right to speak with authority. (For the idea of authority as springing out of complete subjection to a greater, cf. the centurion’s ‘I also am a man under authority,’ Mat 8:9, Luk 7:8). The verse thus falls into line with the whole Epistle as an intensely personal message of remonstrance and appeal. Once more, at the end as at the beginning (Gal 1:1), St. Paul exalts his Apostleship. And what he says here is, ‘Let no man trouble me after this, by challenging my right to declare the truth of the gospel; for I bear branded on my body the marks which testify that I am the slave of Jesus—that He is my Master and my Lord.’

2. The ecclesiastical use of the word.—According to the earliest biographers of St. Francis of Assisi (Thomas of Celano, the ‘Tres Socii,’ and Bonaventura, whose ‘Vitae’ are all included in the Acta Sanctorum), the saint, while meditating in his cell on the sufferings of Jesus, fell into a trance, and had a vision of the Crucified Himself in the form of a seraph. When he awoke he found that he was marked in hands and feet and side with the wounds of the Lord—wounds which remained till the time of his death, that in the side bleeding occasionally. Numerous witnesses testify to having seen these marks in the body of Francis, both during his life and after he was dead. Bonaventura (op. cit. xiii. 4) addresses the saint in the following words: ‘Jam enim propter stigmata Domini Jesu quae in corpore tuo portas, nemo debet tibi esse molestus.’ This is an appropriation to the case of Francis of the Vulgate version of St. Paul’s language in Gal 6:17: from which the inference is natural that the biographer, by a mistaken interpretation of the text, conceived the stigmata of Francis and those of the Apostle to be of a like kind.

From the first the stigmatization of St. Francis was generally accepted in the Catholic Church, not only as a fact, but as a miraculous evidence of the Divine favour; though the Dominicans objected, and attributed the alleged miracle to Franciscan deceit. In the next century, however, similar marks were affirmed to have shown themselves on the person of the well-known Dominican nun, St. Catherine of Siena; and thereafter down to modern times (the last well-authenticated instance was in 1868) the phenomena of stigmatization have repeatedly been vouched for, the subjects, in the great majority of cases, being women. That some of the alleged instances were pure frauds is practically certain, while in other cases the stigmata appear to have been nothing more than wounds self-inflicted by persons in a state of epileptic hysteria. On the other hand, in a number of cases, and notably in that of St. Francis, the positive evidence is too strong to be rejected on either of the above grounds (see esp. the biography of St. Francis by P. Sabatier, mentioned below). And now modern investigations, esp. in the region of psycho-physics, have furnished evidence that goes to support the historical testimony, by assuring us that there is a ‘scientific background’ to the phenomenon of stigmatization. It Is certain that, in sensitive subjects, the influence of the mind in modifying bodily states and producing new conditions is exceedingly great; and stigmatization is now commonly placed by competent students among the peculiar phenomena attributed to hypnotic auto-suggestion. It is accepted as a fact that stigmata have actually appeared on the bodies of persons whose nervous susceptibility was abnormal, when, under the excitement of strong feeling, they have fixed their minds steadily upon the thought of the sufferings of Jesus, and especially on the insignia Passionis (see EBr [Note: Br Encyclopaedia Britannica.] xxii. 550, xxxii. 53; Otto, Naturalism and Religion (1907) 351–52). But while modern science leads us to accept stigmatization as a pathological certainty, it also teaches us to regard it not as a mark of the Divine favour, but as an evidence rather of the presence of hysterical neurasthenia. And modern criticism, again, assures us that the view that it is identical with St. Paul’s ‘stigmata of Jesus’ must be relegated, in Sir W. M. Ramsay’s words (op. cit. p. 472), to the ‘Dark Ages’ of scholarship.

Literature.—For 1: the Comm. of Lightfoot, Alford, and Meyer, in loc.; Ramsay, Hist. Com. on Gal. 472; Phillips Brooks, Candle of the Lord, 355. For 2: artt. ‘Stigmatization’ in EBr [Note: Br Encyclopaedia Britannica.] (by Prof. Macalister of Cambridge) and PRE [Note: RE Real-Encyklopädie fur protest. Theologic und Kirche.] ^{3 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred]} , ‘Stigmata’ in Prot. Dict., ‘Franz von Assisi’ in PRE [Note: RE Real-Encyklopädie fur protest. Theologic und Kirche.] ^{3 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred]} ; the Lives of St. Francis by Thomas of Celano and Bonaventura in Acta Sanctorum: P. Sabatier, Vie de S. François d’Assise (1894—English translation same year), ch. xvii., and ‘Etude critique sur les stigmata’ in the Appendix; W. J. Dawson, The Reproach of Christ, p. 167; Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible , Ext. Vol. Index, s.v. ‘Stigmata.’

J. C. Lambert.

See Marks.