The Strange Phenomenon of Stigmata: The Physical Manifestations Of The Divine

Wound marks on the palms and feet as from the driving of nails into the body of Jesus Christ during his crucifixion. Stab wounds to the body from a Roman soldier’s spear. Skin lesions to the forehead from a crown of thorns - Jesus’s physical execution experience, relived centuries after his death.
Stigmata in Catholicism are bodily wounds, scars, and pain that appear in locations that correspond to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, on the hands, wrists, feet, and body on Catholic mystics and saints, but not strictly isolated to them. The phenomenon is found exclusively within the Catholic Church. The phenomenon has occurred over several centuries but not in any particular order.
Not all manifestations of the Devine within the Catholic Church, affected the Catholic elite, such as Francis of Assisi of Father Pio of Italy. Ordinary Catholics were affected too – some being fake.
Whether such marks are fully penetrating wounds or just surface wounds, is not important.Show more

What they mean and how they came about is the mystery behind how certain believers were stigmatised.
In Ted Harrisons book: ‘ In his Stigmata : A medieval phenomena in a Modern age’, Harrison describes that there is no single cause for the markings, whereby the marks of Stigmata are produced on the human body. Equally, he found no causes in modern case studies, that indicated such marks were produced supernaturally. Are these Stigmata wounds, pain etc, genuine, faked, or medically triggered? The marks of Stigmatism were not considered important by the manner they would appear, but by their religious significance.

Early Medieval period and the Catholic Church.

1048 –
The Great Schism of 1054.
Pope Leo IX, 25 June 1002-19 April 1054, was considered one the most historically significant Pope’s in the Catholic church during the middle ages. At the time, he was instrumental in the Western Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox churches splitting, during the Great Schism of 1054. As the pope in Rome, he was also made a Saint.
The Eastern Orthodox churches would have no official position on Stigmatism, the Western churches saw matters differently. A much fewer number of Eastern Christians worldwide remained, the majority were Western Christians, between the Greek East and Latin West.
Religious Saints, Catholics and the Stigmata:
St. Francis of Assisi:
One the earliest nonbiblical Catholic personalities, but a Saint of a Catholic religious order, Saint Francis of Assisi in 1224, two years before his death, was known to have been vested with a Stigmata experien