670 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ible to ask for tlie benefit of her prayers. On making her profes- 

 sion as a member of the ScBurs Grises at Ottawa she received the 

 stigmata. Since then she had bled every Friday, suffered terri- 

 bly, taken no nourishment, exhaled perfumes from her wounds, 

 offered all her sufferings for souls in purgatory, is stout of body, 

 and shows signs of perfect health. 



Are the stigmata miraculous, or may they be accounted for on 

 pathological principles ? Two answers are given to this question. 

 The first is purely theological, or rather ecclesiastical ; the second 

 is purely scientific. Mediaeval ecclesiasticism affirms them to be 

 miraculous; science maintains that they are natural. Roman 

 Catholicism holds them to be miraculous, but does not make it an 

 article of faith that all its adherents must believe. The Franciscan 

 friars, and also the majority of Roman Catholics, fervently believed 

 and stoutly insisted that the stigmatization of Francis Bernardone 

 was miraculous. Dean Milman says that this almost became the 

 creed of Christendom. " The declaration of Pope Alexander, the 

 ardent protector of the mendicant friars, imposed it almost as an 

 article of the belief." Nicholas IV, who was himself a Franciscan, 

 asserted the stigmata of St. Francis ; a papal bull in 1255 vindi- 

 cated the claims of the miracle ; and Pope Benedict XI set apart 

 the 17th of September of each year as the feast of the Holy Stig- 

 mata. The Dominicans, irreconcilable rivals of the Franciscans, 

 represented the whole affair as an imposture invented to raise the 

 credit of their competitors for papal and popular favor. The 

 Bishop of Olmutz denounced the alleged miracle as irrational. 

 The Dominican, Jacob de Voragine, did not deny the fact of the 

 stigmata, but assigned five causes for them. All resolve them- 

 selves into the first, which is imagination. Petrarch, Cornelius 

 Agrippa, etc., attributed the stigmatization of Bernardone to his 

 glowing fancy, or to an excited imagination acting on a body en- 

 feebled by sickness and religious mortifications. 



As for Palma d' Oria, after reading Dr. Hammond's relation of 

 her absurd impostures, it is difficult not to conclude with him that 

 she was syphilitic, strongly hysterical, the subject of purpura 

 hcBmorrhagica, and " a most unmitigated humbug and liar." 



Neander adopts the theory of Voragine, and thinks that the 

 story of the stigmata of Francis of Assisi sprang " from the self- 

 deception of a fanatical bent of the imagination, and from fancied 

 exaggeration," His language is that of the true philosophic 

 scientist. The phenomena, whatever they were, in the case of St. 

 Francis should be studied in the light of his character. As a youth 

 he was vain, gay, and prodigal ; of ethical education so neglected 

 and perverse that after his reformation he did not scruple to steal 

 from his father in order that he might repair the dilapidated 

 church of St. Damian. Regarded alike by his neighbors and by 



