Francis of Assisi's reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is almost universally considered to be the first documented account of an individual miraculously and physically receiving the five wounds of Christ. The early thirteenth-century appearance of this miracle, however, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17—I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body—had been circulating since the early Middle Ages in biblical commentaries. These works perceived those with the stigmata as metaphorical representations of martyrs bearing the marks of persecution in order to spread the teaching of Christ in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, the meaning of Galatians 6:17 had been appropriated by bishops and priests as a sign or mark of Christ that they received invisibly at their ordination. Priests and bishops came to be compared to soldiers of Christ, who bore the brand (stigmata) of God on their bodies, just like Roman soldiers who were branded with the name of their emperor. By the early twelfth century, crusaders were said to bear the actual marks of the passion in death and even sometimes as they entered into battle. The Stigmata in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe traces the birth and evolution of religious stigmata and particularly of stigmatic theology, as understood through the ensemble of theological discussions and devotional practices. Carolyn Muessig assesses the role stigmatics played in medieval and early modern religious culture, and the way their contemporaries reacted to them. The period studied covers the dominant discourse of stigmatic theology: that is, from Peter Damian's eleventh-century theological writings to 1630 when the papacy officially recognised the authenticity of Catherine of Siena's stigmata.

This study traces the birth and evolution of religious stigmata and particularly of stigmatic theology, as understood through the ensemble of theological discussions and devotional practices.

In this book, twelve scholars of early modern history analyse various categories and cases of deception and false identity in the age of geographical discoveries and of forced conversions: from two-faced conversos to serial converts, from demoniacs to stigmatics, and from self-appointed ambassadors to lying cosmographer.

Domestic devotion has become an increasingly important area of research in recent years, with the publication of a number of significant studies on the early modern period in particular. This Special Issue aims to build on these works and to expand their range, both geographically and chronologically. This collection focuses on lived religion and the devotional practices found in the domestic settings of late medieval and early modern Europe. More particularly, it investigates the degree to which the experience of personal or familial religious practice in the domestic realm intersected with the more public expression of faith in liturgical or communal settings. Its broad geographical range (spanning northern, southern, central and eastern Europe) includes practices related to Christianity, Judaism and Islam. This Special Issue will be of interest to historians, art historians, medievalists, early modernists, historians of religion, anthropologists and theologians, as well as those interested in the history of material religious culture. It also offers important insights into research areas such as gender studies, histories of the emotions and histories of the senses.

IIn premodern Europe, the gender identity of those waiting for Doomsday in their tombs could be reaffirmed, readjusted, or even neutralized. Testimonies of this renegotiation of gender at the encounter with death is detectable in wills, letters envisioning oneself as dead, literary narratives, provisions for burial and memorialization, the laws for the disposal of those executed for heinous crimes and the treatment of human remains as relics.

This book explores the rich and varied mystical writings by and about medieval – and a few early modern – women across Western Europe. Women had a profound and lasting impact on the development of medieval and early modern spiritual and mystical literature, both through their own writing and as a result of the hagiographical texts that they inspired. Bringing together contributions by both established and emerging scholars, the volume provides a valuable overview of medieval mystical women with a special focus on the Low Countries and Italy, regions that produced a disproportionately high number of female mystics. The figures discussed range from Hildegard of Bingen, Hadewijch, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, Angela of Foligno, Julian of Norwich, and Beatrice of Nazareth to lesser-known women such as Agnes Blannbekin, Christina of Hane, and Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi. The chapters address topics such as the body, pain, desire, ecstasy, stigmata, annihilation, virtue, visions, the tension between exterior and interior experience, and the nature of mystical union itself.

This book places the discourse surrounding stigmata within the visual culture of the late medieval and early modern periods, with a particular focus on Italy and on female stigmatics. Echoing, and to a certain extent recreating, the wounds and pain inflicted on Christ during his passion, stigmata stimulated controversy. Related to this were issues that were deeply rooted in contemporary visual culture such as how stigmata were described and performed and whether, or how, it was legitimate to represent stigmata in visual art. Because of the contested nature of stigmata and because stigmata did not always manifest in the same form - sometimes invisible, sometimes visible only periodically, sometimes miraculous, and sometimes self-inflicted - they provoked complex questions and reflections relating to the nature and purpose of visual representation. Dr Cordelia Warr is Senior Lecturer in Art History, University of Manchester, UK.