The Stigmata of Scourging

Among all the dozens of stigmatists who have been declared saint or blessed, the stigmata of scourging appears to be the rarest of the stigmatic injuries.  

St. Colette of Corbie (1381-1447) is principally remembered as one of the most important influences of the Poor Clares, as she established many new convents and reformed existing ones. But she also had a tremendous devotion to the passion of Christ, and would commonly go into ecstasies focused on it. During one such ecstasy, Colette’s “face swelled up as if it had been struck with many blows, seeming only to be of skin and bone. Her nose seemed all beaten out of shape. When she had ended her meditation, her face, as the sisters beheld her, resumed its former natural appearance. The swelling went away, and her nose took its old shape. It is plain S. Colette bore in her countenance the marks of the evil treatment our Lord received from the soldiers and his executioners.”

Anna Maria Gallo, who took the religious name of Sr. Mary Frances of the Five Wounds (1715-1791) when she became a Third Order Franciscan, was graced with the five main wounds of the stigmata. Before she received the stigmata, she mystically experienced the physical passion of Jesus on successive Fridays leading up to Good Friday. On the first Friday, she underwent the agony of Jesus in the garden and, on the following Friday, the suffering of scourging.  

Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824) suffered a wide array of stigmatic wounds, including the five main wounds. Three years before her death, she also suffered the wounds of scourging. Her biographer, Clemens Brentano, who was an eyewitness to her stigmata, writes, “On Friday, the 30th of March, at ten o’clock in the morning, she sank down senseless. Her face and bosom were bathed in blood, and her body appeared covered with bruises like what the blows of a whip would have inflicted.”

St. Gemma Galgani (1878-1903), who suffered the five main wounds, also experienced the wounds of scourging on at least four occasions during the Fridays of March 1901. These incidents were witnessed by others, and were progressively worse. The fourth Friday was the most dramatic. She had “wounds everywhere, that must have been nearly half an inch deep.” Nevertheless, some of her wounds vanished almost immediately afterward, and within three days, all her wounds had healed without a trace.  

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