July 14, 2015 • 48 mins
According to Christian tradition, a stigmatic prays to God so zealously, so faithfully that Christ's crucifixion wounds of manifest in the form of bleeding sores and gorey holes. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian explore stigmata patient zero in the form of Saint Francis of Assisi. What real-life illness might underlie this 13th century mystic's legendary condition?
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lambs Hi, I'm Christian Seger. And
before we get into the topic today, I just want
to remind everyone you can find us on social media
on Facebook, on Twitter, and untum and on tumbler. We
(00:25):
are blow to Mind and I think all of those. Uh,
And if you just do a search for Stuff to
Blow your Mind, people find us will definitely pop up,
and they can also email us questions and comments about
the episode. Where below the mind at how stuff Works
dot com and of course the mothership is Stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. Yeah, definitely make sure that
you go to that site so that you can see
more of the videos and blog posts and galleries and
(00:48):
other content that we produce that go beyond the podcast. Yeah.
We will beam the knowledge directly into your body in
the same way that that one might have the wounds
of Christ lay there into their body. Yeah. I believe
that the way that it works is that an angel
with five wings flies over you and fires lasers from
the wings into the spots of the wounds. If the
(01:10):
paintings are any indication this seems to be the process involved.
So if you couldn't guess we are going to talk
about stigmata today, Yes, Yes, stigmata a topic wanting to
cover here for some time and uh and it's it's
indeed a very they're very deep topic. There are a
lot of there's a lot of there's history, there's science,
(01:30):
there's a religion, myth uh, iconography, there a lot of psychology, psychology,
and we certainly can't do every corner of the story justice,
even in a two part Yeah, I think that it's
important to recognize upfront that that we are not experts
in uh, certainly not experts in Catholic history, which is
(01:53):
a lot of what we're going to talk about in
the first episode is about St. Francis, who is of
course beatified by the Catholic Church and one of the
best known stigmatics in history, right, and he's essentially the
patient zero for stigmata and uh. And he's an interesting
figure from historical standpoint, but also from a biological standpoint,
(02:14):
as we'll get into as as modern day historians look
back at the records and the accounts and try to
figure out what might have been going on with his body.
Uh from a medical standpoint, Yeah, he lived a really
interesting life. And you know, we can go through that
sort of chronologically today, but I think it would probably
help if we start off by just explaining stigmata as
(02:37):
a concept, uh, and and what it is, where the
idea of it came from, and and and how it
resonates with culture today. Indeed. Yeah, So to start off,
the word itself, stigmata comes from the Greek stigma uh.
And this refers to the brand with which slaves and
criminals in ancient Greece and Rome were marked. Hence our
verb stigmatized to mark as with a brand disgrace. Yeah.
(03:01):
So if you're if you are, what how does that
work in terms of stigma stigmatization of the eye Is
that there's a mark on your actual eye? Ah? You know,
I don't know, if I wonder, I wonder what the
connection is there, but I bet it's got to be
something like that. Given the synonym with markings. I know
(03:23):
that if you are suffering the the Catholic stigmata um,
your eye doctor will probably be able to do nothing. Yeah,
They're useless in that sense. They can't even stop the bleeding.
It's true. It's true. So the Catholic stigmata, which a
number of you've probably at least absorbed through art or
pop culture. You know, we're talking about the physical manifestation
(03:45):
of the wounds of Jesus Christ crucified. Yeah, specifically the
two wounds in the hand. They're usually found in the palm,
which is important. We'll come back to that later. There's
two wounds in the feet as well. These are from
the nails that were hammered through Christ's hands and feet.
And then there's a fifth wound that a lot of
(04:05):
people don't recognize, which is on his side. I don't
know if it was on his right or left side,
but he was uh lanced or speared by I believe
a Roman soldier as he was carrying the cross. I
believe it's the right side at least in various paintings,
but I'm not I'm not sure of it if there's
(04:27):
a definite right versus left, you know, cannonized. So beyond
the horrific nature of being crucified, hanging from across bleeding
from those wounds, he also had a pretty massive wound
in his side, according to the Bible and other stories,
uh that that was bleeding and would have killed them anyways, presumably.
(04:50):
And then there are a number of sort of add
on stigmata wounds you can throw in the pop up,
like the lacerations on the back from being scourged, crown
of thorns, fro thorn's, sometimes bleeding eyes are thrown in,
as well as kind of uh, that's that's more of
a garden of a cassemine, kind of a thing that
would be on top of everything else that would be rough. Yeah,
(05:12):
I mean, they really laid into the man. So there's
a lot to choose from, but certainly the the big five,
the five wounds, those are the ones that typically in
order to be actually recognized I believe by the Church
to it has to be those five wounds. Right now,
I do want to point out that stigmata, at least
as we're discussing it here, it's not necessarily a purely
(05:36):
Christian phenomenon. According to Pamela ray heat M d Uh
in her work A Mind Matter Interaction or a View
of Historical Reports, Theories and Research, she says there are
a few accounts of stigmata among Muslims and Hindus. With
Muslims the alleged stigmata resemble the battle wounds of the
prophet uh and I've personally read accounts of one if
(06:00):
twenty one century Indian thinker, philosopher ug christa Mutri undergoing
supposedly undergoing physical transformations, the swelling swellings around the chakras
in various discolorations that match up with Hindu iconography. Yeah,
so I think it's important to acknowledge that at the top, because,
as we're going to find throughout the discussion today, there
(06:21):
are multiple possible origins for stigmata. And one could potentially
be self mutilation, which might explain why in different religions
there at different points the body. Another could potentially be
psycho sematic, which would also explain that if you were
hyper fixated in your mind on specific points of your body,
(06:44):
then there's a possibility that lesions could appear. Well, it
hasn't been proven or not, but there's there's evidence that
that might be the case in some of these stigmatic cases.
And then of course, lasers from an angel right, which
I believe that most of the research refers to as
uh de ific intervention. And you know, we won't spend
(07:09):
a lot of time on that one, but it is
interesting to sort of think about it as non theologians.
Uh you know why why how that would work with
the metaphysics. Like, the best I could think of is
that it's sort of like you have you have the
the the birth and death of Christ is kind of
a patch that's applied to the existing reality. So reality
(07:29):
comes out like a game comes out, and there's some
problems with him. God says, I, really, I have got
to put out a big patch to fix fix this right,
save humanity. But before I get into that, I mean,
I guess we should obviously just do a quick run
through of how crucifixion and Jesus fit factors into the
Christian and its particularly the Catholic worldview. So to summarize,
(07:49):
you have the basic notion here that God takes human
form in the guise of Jesus. He's tortured, killed on
a Roman crucifix for the ideas that he spread, and
it's through this execution and resurrection of God incarnate that
humanity is redeemed. So God suffers bodily death so that
humans might know bodily immortality. Yeah, and and I think
(08:10):
that that's important to consider when we're talking about later
stigmatics who think of themselves as also suffering for the
sins of mankind. Um, and I I think that I
have a little bit of a logic problem with connecting
the dots there. For the stigmatics I get, I get
(08:32):
the Christian origin story and believe it or not. You know,
I I I grew up going to church reading the
Bible a lot, and UM, I have somewhat of an
affinity for those stories. I wouldn't call myself an atheist
per se, but I here's how I feel about the
whole stigmadeling. I don't necessarily believe that it's de ific
(08:57):
intervention going on here, but I will. I think I
believe that the people, most of the people who are
affected by stigmata believe it themselves. I believe that they believe. Yeah,
there's there's definitely some some fakery in there at times
with some of the stigmatics. Oh yeah, there's cases that
will come across where people were called out on it
(09:20):
and it was discovered that they were you know, it
was it was self mutilation. Yeah. Now, I mean I
like to look at it from from from different vantage points,
and of course we invite listeners to do that. As well.
But but when I try and put myself in the
mind of the of the really devoute believer and trying
to think, well, how would this work in the metaphysics
of Christianity From a purely non theologian standpoint, I think
(09:43):
of screen burn You know, the old phenomenon where you'd
have your tell your computer screen. You leave some text
up there too long and it gets burned into the screen, right,
like the reason why we have screensavers. Yeah, that it's
essentially your screensavers, not up on your your faith. And
so you're so into thinking about Christ and UH and
the iconography of Christ and holiness and and then it
(10:06):
ends up manifesting in your hands body or a more
elaborate version that came to mind is that it's uh
like a pre christ world. Is is like a game
that comes out. It comes out a little too early.
A lot of work went into creating this video game,
but there are some problems. So God says, all right,
I've got to apply a patch to this thing. So
(10:26):
it releases the patch. But the patch, as we all know,
you apply a big patch to a game, it just
creates more a little bugs. And so maybe the stigmata
is is kind of a bug in the game post patch. Uh,
that is just a sort of an accident. Right. It's
difficult because within the the actual I want to call
(10:47):
it Laura, as if we're like referring to some kind
of supernatural vampire story here. But like within the text
of the Bible, there's only one mention of stigmata, and
even that is fairly vague. I believe it's in Galashians, uh,
and it's in reference to the apostle Paul, but it's
not entirely known if he's actually talking about stigmata the
(11:09):
way that he refers to it, that uh, manifesting on
his body is the marks of Christ. Indeed, indeed, and
just to put that in the in the context of
the timeline here, Paul would have lived five c E. Right,
And the exact quote, I'm sorry I didn't have it earlier,
was I bear in my body the marks of the
Lord Jesus. Now does by marks does he mean literally
(11:34):
the wounds through the hands and feet inside or does
he mean something else, maybe a tattoo, Maybe it's metaphorical.
We'll get into that later. But I believe that it's
best if we start off with what you referred to
as patient zero with St. Francis, who was really like
the case that that that has the most not evidence
(11:54):
because you know, it happened what eight hundred nine d
years ago, but there's a lot of documentation about it
and and um discussion about the wounds. Yeah, he lived
close to eight hundred years ago, and he's he's definitely
the trends thattor, this is the patient zero for stigmata um.
(12:15):
And you know, modern historians continue to sort through early
biographies to make sense of the terms used in the
accounts given uh and in some cases make an argument
for the stigmata's roots in natural world illness rather than
supernatural miracle, which will we'll get into. But yeah, Francis
today is known as the patron saint of animals in
the environment, the father of the Franciscan Order. He was
(12:37):
born one died in twelve twenty six and the key
event in his life for the purposes of discussing stigmata
is that late in his life he's on the slopes
of Italy's Mount Laverna and he's visited by this fiery
vision of a crucified Christ flames twisting into the forum
of Sarah wings. And according to the lore, uh, this
(12:59):
is such an tense mystical experience that it inflicts the
wounds of the crucifixion right onto Francis hands and feet,
whereas it depicted in some of the paintings that we
were looking at laser beams from a fire. That's what
it looks like in the in these images. Yeah. Uh.
And and what's interesting about this is that there is
some documentation that says that there was someone with Francis
(13:22):
when this happened. And I believe the understanding was that
they didn't see this, uh, this angelic manifestatious manifestation in
the way that Francis described to them, but that they
did see him, you know, kind of fall in pain
and all of a sudden have these wounds. But makes
sense that someone would be with him, right, because Francis
was not a well man, and he was fairly infirm
(13:44):
and by late life I think he lived into his
forties maybe, so even for the time, he was only
a little bit older than us. Yeah. So if he
was to say, hey, I'm gonna go out into the
wilderness and pray a little bit, they would have said, well,
pulled on, let's send. Yeah. So Francis is uh kind
of interesting before he became, you know, the major figure
(14:08):
of the Franciscan order because he was you know, he
came from I don't know about like wealth, but he
was what we would probably referred to as middle class today. Uh,
and left that to go to war. Uh. He was
in one war, was a prisoner of war, and it
was described I think it's accurate to say that he
was fairly traumatized by that experience. Yeah, that was the
(14:31):
gist I got from the sources we're looking at. Uh.
And then he came back, had some epiphanies about life,
you know, as would be expected after an experience like that,
was sent to war again, and it was on his
way to the second War that he had a vision correct. Yeah.
And this is where accounts get kind of complicated, because
(14:52):
some accounts seemed to indicate that he just either felt
unwell or he suffered dreams about becoming unwell. It depends
on who he asked, but any rate, he definitely had
a change of heart. Uh. And maybe there was a
there was an ailment angle to that as well. There
could be, yeah, because he again, like he suffered illness
(15:13):
even from a fairly young age in life. Uh And
but basically the vision was that he shouldn't go to war,
that he should go back devote his life to the
teachings of Christ and and basically modeling on the life
of Christ. Uh And there was a point where he
went to Rome. Uh and what he took to doing
(15:34):
was begging with the poor around Rome and becoming uh
becoming a pauper, becoming homeless, essentially an understanding life from
the streets. Yeah. And in twelve or six, which is
just you know, in the in the years immediately following
his his vision initial vision in which he gave up war,
(15:54):
he begins working with lepers, which and I mean working
in close confines, with living with them, eating with them,
kissing them, etcetera. Yeah, I'd like to stop there for
a second. So I have a personal experience. When I
was fifteen years old, I went on a trip to
Katmandu in Nepal and it was it was there was
(16:18):
like a tour service. I believe, it wasn't fancy or anything,
but there was a guide who took us around Catmandu
and we did various activities. And at the time, this
was in the early nineties, Uh, there were plenty of
lepers around Catman Do and it was my first experience
even with hearing the term, much less seeing in real life.
(16:40):
It is a horrible affliction and it's um, extremely sad.
But the idea that he was, as you described, in
such close contact with these lepers of Rome and other
other towns around Italy mainly, Uh, it just it just
goes to show you, you know, what kind of a
(17:00):
man he was, how dedicated he was to to the
teachings of the church. Yeah, I mean, especially when you
think you think about how m complicated the idea of
physical ailment was at the time, because it's all tied
up with ideas about moral failing and sin as well.
So so there's the idea that not only is he
working with the disease, he's working with people that are
perhaps spiritually impure. Um. But again it's very much in
(17:25):
keeping with this, uh, this this new purpose in his life, right. Yeah,
he did not worry about being I guess tainted would
be the word physically or spiritually. So some other high
points from his life. Twelve thirteen twelve fourteen, he had
to aboard a journey to Morocco cut out he cut
out in Spain due to quote prolonged illness in which
(17:47):
he lost his speech for three days, uh twelve seventeen.
He suffered from court and fever, but accounts differ on
whether this was an actual illness or a metaphorical fever
such as a temptation, uh, you know vision experience. Yeah,
And so the resource that um we read from that
that accounts on this actually breaks down, you know, nowadays
(18:10):
when we referred to Corten fever, it's it's synonymous with malaria,
I believe. But what they were saying was that in
the Middle Ages, you know, obviously medicine wasn't where it
is now, and that there were different types of quote
unquote fevers basically that they applied to dozens of diseases,
and I think I think they've listed it as like
seventy seven different types of fever were possible at the time,
(18:33):
but there were four categories of them, and the way
that they categorized them was how often you had the fever.
So if you had it daily, it was Quotitian, if
you had it every other day, it was Tertian, and
if you had it every third day, it was corton.
And the fourth one was continuous. You just had it
all the time, all right, And then of course you
(18:54):
could just be saying I had a fever and yeah,
a mystical experience exactly. So it's really hard to tell
what they meant by this, but we're fairly certain it
wasn't malaria that they were referring to that they meant.
Around twelve twenty, he begins that you experience constant eye pain,
constant peers flowing out of his eyes, which gets back
to that, uh, your reference to stigmatics, who believed from
(19:19):
the eyes? Yeah, indeed, and that is the year that
he suffers the stigmata at Alverna. And after this, it's
it's important to note it's not just a matter of
these um uh, these these wounds or sores manifesting on
his hands and feet. He's experiencing pain all over his body.
At this point, he's he has using wounds or sores.
(19:39):
He becomes unable to walk, right. So this is something
that I wanted to point out too, is the being
unable to walk thing could be a symptom of one
of the many other illnesses that he was exposed to,
or let's let's say the stigmata happened and his feet
were pierced through as if they had been pierced by nails.
I imagine what walking would be difficult for any stigmatic Yes,
(20:02):
I would think so? Um so, I yeah, I'm kind
of wondering why that isn't a more common symptom that
we hear about as we, you know, later talk about
other stigmatics in history. Seems like they would all be
confined to a wheelchair, crutches or something. The year after that, twelve,
he receives treatment for his eye pains. And when we
(20:24):
say treatment, we're talking about the cauterization of veins from
years to eyebrows due to the constant accumulation of fluid.
And this was a standard medical procedure of the day. Uh.
But he also he felt no pain when he allegedly
when this was administered to him. And so by twelve
twenty six, he's almost completely blind. He has a wasted body,
(20:47):
his skin is darkened, he's vomiting blood, suspected liver and
spleen ailments, headaches, and that same year he dies at
age forty four, after a life spent traveling off in
far and travel in poverty, working with the sick, including
those with leopards. So, in summary, Francis was a guy
who uh lived in poverty on purpose, so subsequently probably
(21:11):
had poor nutritional practices. Uh. He had a history of
exposure to many diseases, especially leprosy, and uh he was
debilitated by these diseases through probably the last decade of
his life. Yeah, so we have we have plenty of
stuff to work with when trying to look for a
purely biological explanation for why this guy would have experienced
(21:34):
what we would come to know as the stigmata. A
couple other facts about Francis I'd like to throw out
there before we dive into the disease part. Francis, did
you know this He was the first person to create
a Nativity scene. Yeah, apparently he was the one who
had the idea for that around Christmas time, you know,
replicating the Nativity. Uh. And it was only two years
(21:58):
after he died that he became a saying. He was
pronounced to saying by the Pope. Yeah, fast turned around.
You don't get back today, right, I would say that
that's I don't know, Pope John Paul. But it was
pretty quick for him. But even still I don't. I
don't think it was within two years. I mean, it's
also I think important to note about Francis that most
of the sources we were looking at, uh, there was
(22:19):
no indication that he made any personal claims to have
suffered or experienced some sort of supernatural Christ like wound
in his body. Yeah. That's what's really interesting about this
is a lot of the accounts and the research that
looks into the various evidence is that Francis himself was
very reluctant to talk about the stigmata UH, and in fact,
(22:44):
you know, didn't want it to be publicized would be
the wrong word because they didn't exactly have mass media then,
but he didn't want it to be something that was
spoken of. He was actually worried that if it was
talked about, that his um that he you know, would
be in trouble, that the grace of God that was
stowed upon him would be taken away from him. UM.
So he tried to hide the wounds. And there's references
(23:06):
to him being ill towards the end of his life,
you know, laying in bed, uh, monks tending to him,
and you know, one I think was like maybe washing
him or or or reaching to to uh move his
torso and touched the wound in his side, and he,
you know, gasped out in pain. But he did not
want this monk to say anything about it. It was
(23:28):
not Francis's idea. I think if we were going to
say Francis faked this whole thing so that he seemed
like he was a saint, right, it doesn't match up
with the um the stories of the man and other
occasions that he did not seem like the kind of
person with the quality of character that would make up
a story like this, because he didn't even want other
(23:50):
people to know about it. Yeah, it wasn't until October three,
twelve six that we know that was the first written
account of Saint France just having experienced some sort of
miraculous wounds. Uh. And this comes to us from the
writings of brother Elias. He says, and is that? And
now I announced to you a great joy, a new miracle.
(24:11):
The world has never heard of such a miracle except
in the Son of God, who is Christ, our Lord.
A little while before his death, our brother and father
appeared crucified, bearing in his body the five wounds, which
are truly the stigmata of Christ his hands and feet,
where as if punctured by nails, pierced on both sides
and had scars that were the black color of nails.
His side appeared pierced by a lance and often gave
(24:33):
forth droplets of blood. And it's important to note that
line about a new miracle, um, you know, an exceptional miracle,
because it it drives home that this was this was
a pretty powerful thing to claim about somebody. This was
This was a potentially dangerous idea at the time, absolutely
because uh and in fact, there were you know, other
(24:56):
monks that doubted francis Is authenticity with this and a
I believe the way that they described it was that
he was trying to be a quote new God. Yeah,
and that like there was the iconography surrounding this event
and specifically stigmatics was questionable because it was drawing attention
away from Christianity itself. Yeah, I mean, because because the
(25:18):
initial reaction would be like, are you trying to single
white female? What's going on? As Arnold I. Davidson points
out in his article Miracles of Bodily Transformation or How
Saint Francis received the Stigmata, he said that Francis. Stigmata
was written off at the time as we just saw
as a unique miracle, indeed a miracle greater than any
other miracle. And even then, to counter doubts and denials
(25:42):
in the day at that time required nine papal bulls. Um,
so I have some you know, some big authoritatory statements,
some big press releases got down from from the pope's
office saying no, this is the real, this is for real. Yeah,
and from my reading it sounds like, um, the popes
at the time of his life had met with him
(26:04):
personally on several occasions too, so they were well aware
of this. It wasn't as if he was just you know,
someone who is rather low on the echelon of the
Catholic hierarchy. And various other accounts in the time of Stigmata,
we were often just completely thrown out, just rejected as
as you know, scandals or even potentially heretical, because the
(26:26):
basic idea is you're presenting France is not only as saintly,
but but almost as this new Christ. Yeah. And we
should say here too that uh, it's somewhat misleading to
describe St. Francis as the first stigmatic because there were
between Christ's death and between St. Francis's life there were
(26:47):
cases of quote unquote stigmata. But we'll get into it
later about whether that actually meant wounds as we come
to understand them as being stigmatic or not. Uh, it
could mean many other things based on the literature at
the time. One thing I wanted to talk about with St.
Francis is um the description of his stigmata by Thomas
(27:11):
Solano in this book that he wrote about St. Francis,
The Life of St. Francis from eight I think you
referenced this as well, and then notes the the way
that he described the wounds in the hands was not
just that they were holes like we would imagine from
like a horror movie or something, but that you could
actually see the points of the nails protruding from the flesh.
(27:34):
That they were like the nail points were pushing up
through the flesh and black underneath, as if you know,
there were like ghost nails there. Uh. And that I
mean we think of stigmata today as being a kind
of supernatural, scary type symbolism. You know that you would
(27:54):
have you would see in a horror movie, But I
can't imagine that that seems so much scarier to me.
You know, I'm surprised that some some horror director hasn't
glommed onto that yet and pulled that into the content
that they've produced, because it's just the idea of these
permanent nails just kind of just barely pushing up under
(28:17):
your skin. It's cruciating. Yeah, and it's the important to
hear as well that some of the accounts vary on
exactly what the wounds of St. Francis consisted, often in
the same way that the stigmatic traditions to follow. You'd
see everything from you know, slight blemishes, um and little
sores counting stigmata to actual holes or the manifestation of nails. Right. Yeah,
(28:39):
sometimes it's just like purple marks in the palms of
your hands. All right, you know, let's take a quick break.
When we come back, we will jump into some of
the various disease explanations for the stigmata experience by St. Francis.
Of all right, we're back, so we're gonna we're gonna
(29:08):
pick through some of the possible disease explanations here for St. Francis.
Real quick. We mentioned that he traveled into some of
the swampy territory in Italy had turned back from going
to Morocco. So there's one possibility that he suffered from malaria. Now,
to touch back upon what we talked about earlier, quartaine
(29:31):
fever and malaria sort of understood as different things at
the time, but still he may have contracted malaria. Yeah.
The the late historian Dr Edward Frederick Hartung made out
a strong case for malignant malaria as being the the
cause of these uh, these these bodily manifestation um, though
(29:53):
rarely encountered with today's treatment. One complication of malignant malaria
infection is the purplish hemorrhage of blood through the skin,
also known is papa uh. And what's more, propera usually
distribute symmetrically according to the heart, tongue, on the hands,
and on the feet. So is it possible that these
(30:15):
supernatural wounds were mere hemorrhages caused by malaria. Yeah, And
propara or as I pronounced it, I think properah are
just one of many types of lesions that can form
as a result of the various diseases we're going to
talk about today, and they're they're the larger of the
categories of legions that can form on your body as
(30:35):
a result. Now, it's worth pointing out that there's some
problems with the with the malaria argument. According to Johann
shops Line and Daniel P. Selmasti, it was until the
seventeenth century the physicians could distinguish between the fevers of
malaria and other fevers. The true cause of malaria wasn't
known until the nineteenth century. The word malaria didn't even
exist until the six so we we can't be for sure.
(30:58):
And also malaria doesn't fact the bones. And then as
we'll get into uh shortly, uh, there's some skeletal evidence
that seems to point in the direction of a particular ailment. Right,
that's somewhat important for as evidence forensic evidence in the
case of Saint Francis um other possibilities wants. Some have
(31:18):
argued tuberculosis um and it's certainly a statistical possibility, but
the chances are slim since it didn't become a huge
issue um until in Europe, until the urbanization of the
sixteenth through nineteen centuries. Yeah, and one of the interesting
things about the tuberculosis argument is that some sources, you know,
after his death suggested that it's possible that he contracted
(31:39):
tuberculosis from his mother because his mother was from France
and it was more common there. Tuberculosis was more common
in France. Um, but most people criticize this as not
being legitimate claim. Is you know that that's just just like, well, yeah,
you know, maybe it's possible, but is it Is it
(31:59):
really likely, especially compared with some of the other candidates. Yeah,
there's also speculation that he was a mnemic as well,
but again this is all after his life. There's no
evidence of either of these things in the actual written
literature of the time of people who lived around St. Francis. Yeah,
which is largely all we have to go on. So
others have made cases for brucellosis, humophilia, herpie simplex. But
(32:25):
the really convincing one, the one we ended up spending
a lot more time on, is leprosy, because again, he
spent a lot of time with leopards, living with them,
eating with them, coming into visual physical contact with them. Yeah,
and is you know, the ethos of his life was
to basically live like them, you know, to take on
the same pains that they had taken on. So it
(32:47):
seems to me that in his mind that contracting leprosy
was was not you know, a punishment per se, It
was part of the life that he wanted to lead,
caring for the ill and for the poor. And there
was a lot of it at the time too. It
was common in medieval Europe. It was common in thirteenth
century Italy, and there were six leper houses in a
(33:10):
c c alone, you know. Interesting a side note about
leprosy in in Europe. Leprosy and Europe declined significantly after
the Black Plague of through three, right, And I believe
the idea there is that because lepers were already susceptible
to illness and weak, that they were you know, largely
(33:33):
killed off by the plague, almost entirely, right, so that
there there wasn't a lot of opportunity to contract it otherwise. Yeah,
and uh, and and there's also a case to be
made that the process of segregating lepers actually decreased transmission
increases in dietary vitamin C gave some degree of protection
against it. And since leprosy into NTB are both caused
(33:54):
by different species of the same bacterium, the rise of TB,
as we discussed that comes with the organization might have
provided protection against leprosy due to cross immunity. So you
have immune responses that are stimulated to fight one infection, uh,
and they combat the other. And lepers often contracted TV,
and those with TV seldom contracted leprosy, even in places
(34:17):
where both were endemic. But to clarify, Francis lived almost
a hundred years before the Black plague really kicked in, right,
So we can't really factor black plague into it. That's
what's whine. It doesn't really come up as one of
the potential possibilities. But I think that does help to
underline how how complicated it begins to be when you
start looking back at a disease in history, because it
(34:41):
of course doesn't exist in isolation. Yeah. Absolutely, Oh, this
reminds me. There is an interesting factoid that you told
me before we started recording that sort of places St.
Francis in history, and we're talking about where he is
in relation to the Black plague. Talk about Genghis Khan. Oh, Yeah,
the the year St. Francis was born two, Genghis Khan
(35:03):
was twenty years old at the time, So that kind
of gives you a little bit of a reference point, yeah,
particularly if you're may be more familiar with with Asian
history versus European. Alright, So the case for leprosy um.
A lot of this comes from paper by Flatson and
soul Mastery, who I mentioned earlier, and I'll make sure
to include a link to to to that resource on
(35:23):
the landing page of this episode of Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot Com in case you want to check
it out. But they contended what could have been going
on here was that it was something known as tuberculoid leprosy. Uh.
They contended to medieval physicians only understood one form of
leprosy really, and that's the disfiguring lepromattis, of which we'll discuss,
and they might have missed this more subtle tuberculoid kind
(35:45):
of leprosy that that he might have had. So as
like a lay person not particularly understanding these diseases up
close and personal, other than my experience of seeing lepers
when I was younger, I'm a mad inning that. Let's
say this was the case. He had lesions on his
hands and feet and maybe on his side, but he
(36:08):
probably also had lesions across his whole body, right right, Yeah,
that's that's the the takeaway that I get I get
from this, Okay. So, I mean most people out there
are probably thinking of leprosy as just like digits fall off,
parts of your face fall off, things like that. That's
sort of the popular culture understanding of it. But these
(36:29):
these open wounds are popping up everywhere on the body,
not just it wasn't necessarily and in fact, in some
of the descriptions of St. Francis that we we read
for this, that they described all of the wounds on
his body and the oozing sores and the pain that
he was constantly in. Yeah. Now, the Greeks and Romans,
they had three different terms for leprosy. There was a
(36:50):
lepra because the scaly, non leprous skin disease, elephant titus,
which was actually true leprosy, and as as well as philaresis,
a parasitic roundworm infection and also loose, a condition that
might link to terpuloid leprosy, described in the work of
(37:11):
a second century Greek Christian philosopher who was not actually
widely read interest in his own time and virtually unknown
to thirteenth century Europe. So it's another case where there's
one pocket of understanding about leprosy, but it's not even
widely known at the time. Um. And you know, to
further complicate things, you get overlapping terminology and medical texts
(37:32):
available at the time that they lack the medical knowledge
to properly diagnose anything other than the classic just facially
disfiguring a leprosy that we've discussed here. So okay, So,
like I said, I'm sort of a layperson when it
comes to this. Let's go back to you mentioned bacteria
as being part of leprosy, So what actually causes It's
(37:53):
a micro bacterium, right, yeah, yeah, let's yeah, we should
get down to brass tacks on that leprosy is caused
by the bacteria Microbacterium lepre and it's highly infectious, easily transmitted,
but only a small percentage of individuals actually thought clinically
significant disease. The incubation period between five and twenty years,
(38:13):
and the nutritional status of the infect it plays a
big role in whether it actually progresses in One of
the things we know about St. Francis was that he
was purposely limiting his nutrition as part of his life
of poverty. Yeah, he's living poor, he's he's also you know,
going out in the wilderness, um, you know who often
involves fasting. Yeah, something to keep Yeah, yeah, all the
(38:35):
fasting that he did as well, that's true. I hadn't
thought about that far. He definitely wasn't like taking a
multi complex vitamin, No, definitely not so so. Yeah, diet
affects the progress, and progress is key in lepro mattis
leprosy again, they really disfiguring when the immune system is
just completely overwhelmed. The full range of disfiguring and debilitating
(38:55):
symptoms are possible. Nodules, mutilating lesions on the face, also
ripheral nerve infections. And this is the you know, the
one that the physicians of the day was the most
That's what I mean. I didn't get up close and personal,
but that was what I witnessed when I spent time
in Nepal. Yeah, this is the the just the wretched,
worst leprosy infection to get. But in tuberculoid leprosy, the
(39:18):
body's immune system effectively staves off the greater infection by
keeping the infestation isolated to the nerves. So you have flat,
slightly discolored patches on the skin with a decreased sensation. Again. Wait,
you know mentioned earlier how he supposedly did not feel
the pain of his his eye treatment. Yeah, this is
(39:40):
like if you're a Game of Thrones fan, this is
like what do they call it? Gray scale? Yeah, yeah,
that's where George Martin got the idea for that. From that,
either from there or no, it would have the other
timeline doesn't support it. But there was an episode of
Look Around You where they covered the case of Cobb. Oh,
(40:00):
I've not heard of this, um fabulous British comedy series
with kind of science vibe to it. Be an individual
whose skin was turning into rocks cobbles, and you see
him and he's basically a pile of rocks setting on
a sound stage talking o. Um. But anyway, pop culture, way,
as we deal with these horrific ailments that have destroyed mankind.
(40:25):
So yeah, tuberculoid leprosy, the infected nervous system UM is
doing what it can to fight it off, to to
keep it isolated, but it can result also in neurotic pain,
decreased sensitivity in the toes and fingers. And between these
two types there's borderline leprosy, which you know kind of
a little bit of both, right, Uh and uh, you
(40:46):
know we mentioned those ailes, those eye ailments. Uh, it
also affects the eyes of leprosy cases involves some sort
of eye issues, infection of the cranial nerves. Uh, they
can cease blinking, producing in producing instance of civity to damage. Well,
and not being able to blink would definitely explain why
he was constantly tearing up exactly. Also direct infection of
(41:08):
the eyes due to you know, damage from fingers, uh,
damage to the tear docks, excessive tearing, puss formation, and
again loss of finger digits because because again it's it's
it's affecting the nervous system and causing a decreased sensitivity
to toes and fingers, which in the case of someone
(41:28):
with leprosy, can result in uh, an easier injury of
those digits. So let's hone in on that for a minute.
As we referenced earlier, there's evidence that Francis himself was
missing digits and we know this because was it in
the early eighteen hundreds. They I'm not sure if they
(41:51):
exhumed his corps or not, but they examined his corpse
and we're able to find that he was missing several digits.
Is that correct? Based on descriptions and and later as
some actual photographs of St. Francis's skeletal remains, there's possible
evidence of leprosy and some of the missing finger bones,
eight of ten metacarpals, those are the closest to the palm. Okay,
(42:14):
if you look down at your hand now are present,
and only sixteen of twenty eight philangial bones those are
the two outer bones of each finger. Only sixteen out
of eight are present on the body. So help me
to understand this for a second. Here if again, like
let's go with the d I f uh interpretation here
(42:35):
for a moment, if uh wounds had manifested in his
palms and feet, as if nails had been driven through them,
or even let's say, for the sake of argument, that
he self mutilated and he hammered nails through his hands
and feet himself, wouldn't there be evidence of that as
well in the bones that they found Potentially? Yeah, I mean, like,
(42:57):
you know, it just comes down to how it would
have been as Yeah, but but yeah, there was from
what I was reading, there's no evidence of that from
from looking at the bones there's also nothing, nothing to
suggest that they were taking his relics or loss, because
that's probably some people's minds with the holy dude, someone
probably right, somebody's wearing a necklace of the pinky of St. Francis.
(43:19):
And then finally from the body, there also appears to
be an enlargement of nutrient for amina openings and bones
for nourishing blood vessels that could be possible evidence of
leprosy having ravaged body. Okay, so if we review these
diseases that we spoke about about possibilities, We talked about malaria,
and talked about tuberculosis and leprosy, leprosy, there's a strong
(43:42):
case to be made. There seems to be a lot
of evidence pointing that way, both in the literature and
in actually looking at his body, that he had contracted
leprosy from the many years of working with the sick.
He was probably a leper himself. It sounds like for
almost a decade, maybe longer, because he had been ill
(44:04):
even before. In some cases there's there's accounts of his
illness before he even you know, took a vow of poverty.
Um maybe you know, who knows, Maybe that's why what
led him to taking a vow of poverty. Was that
he was what he was sick. So but at the
end of the day, it really seems like leprosy is
the most logical explanation. I think so. But based on
(44:28):
what we looked at, like, that's the one that seems
that there's the most evidence for, and it matches up
with his timeline the best. The physical evidence, what little
we have seems to seems to support it. Uh. And
you know, and again fasting poor diet nutrition it it
would have made him even more susceptible to it. And
he was. He was not a well man for most
of his life anyway. Now, this isn't a discount that
(44:50):
this was a pretty saintly dude, as I would put it. Uh,
you know, I mean, it sounds like from all accounts
that he was the real deal. He was genuinely very
uh generous man. Uh and who did live his life
by the teachings that he followed. Um. But that doesn't
(45:11):
necessarily mean that the de ific intervention was a result
of what we think of as his stigmata today. Yeah,
and you know, you look back on it, and I mean,
on one level, you can sort of look at the stigmata,
the holy stigmata that the tradition that follows is kind
of a pr campaign because you know, at the time,
(45:32):
leprosy was seen as as a disease of the soul.
It's not the kind of thing a holy man would have.
So to heal with this juxtaposition, you have to come
up with a mystical interpretation of what's happening. Why. It
comes down to, like, why do bad things happen to
good people? Why? Why does something this horrible happen to
somebody who's doing such good work in the world. Yeah,
and you say, well, maybe it's not a bad thing.
(45:53):
Maybe it's exactly Yeah, he's carrying the the he's carrying
the marks of Christ, who was also you know, wounded
in service to mankind. Yeah, that could be definitely the
way that is interpreted, especially because all of the research
that I saw, there was never a mention by any
(46:14):
of the other clergy that Francis was a leper. There
was just a mention of his various illnesses and the
symptoms that he had for you know, many years, right,
And you know, you know, naturally we can never know
for certain about any of this um but you know,
when you look at this, this, uh, the supernatural explanation.
(46:34):
When you look at the leprosy explanation there, you could
argue they're kind of shades of the same thing, because
presumably this, you know, the creator God in this scenario
would have sent the Sarah, who sent the Sarah would
have also created the protozoans responsible for the malaria or
the or the or the the bacteria that caused the leprosy.
And uh, you know, in Francis seems to suggest as
(46:58):
much himself. Again he he never actually talked about his uh,
you know, any mystical wounds, as we already mentioned. Right,
he didn't flaunt it, right, but but but here's just
a little something that he said, uh in in the
Little Flowers of St. Francis, he says, my dear son,
be patient, because the weaknesses of the body are given
to us in this world by God for the salvation
(47:19):
of the soul. So they are of great merit when
they are born patiently. So I mean, ultimately, you have
a dude that suffers from leprosy working with lepers uh
in the name of God. And you know, if that's
if that's the actual explanation, if that's actually what happened
instead of some supernatural explanation. It seems to me to
(47:39):
be perfectly in keeping with that with the values of
that faith. Now we've taken a look at patient zero.
This is the most I don't know popular isn't the
right word I would use, but well known example of
stigmata and history, and we've discussed two possibilities for its
disease or deific interve and intervention. Uh. In the second
(47:59):
part of this episode, we're going to talk about to
other possibilities. There's psychosomatic possibilities and then there's also the
possibility of self mutilation. Right, so we'll we'll get into
the psychology and the science of those topics in the
next episode. In the meantime, be sure to check out
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where you'll
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(48:21):
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(48:44):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lambs Hi, I'm Christian Seger. And
before we get into the topic today, I just want
to remind everyone you can find us on social media
on Facebook, on Twitter, and untum and on tumbler. We
(00:25):
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And if you just do a search for Stuff to
Blow your Mind, people find us will definitely pop up,
and they can also email us questions and comments about
the episode. Where below the mind at how stuff Works
dot com and of course the mothership is Stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. Yeah, definitely make sure that
you go to that site so that you can see
more of the videos and blog posts and galleries and
(00:48):
other content that we produce that go beyond the podcast. Yeah.
We will beam the knowledge directly into your body in
the same way that that one might have the wounds
of Christ lay there into their body. Yeah. I believe
that the way that it works is that an angel
with five wings flies over you and fires lasers from
the wings into the spots of the wounds. If the
(01:10):
paintings are any indication this seems to be the process involved.
So if you couldn't guess we are going to talk
about stigmata today, Yes, Yes, stigmata a topic wanting to
cover here for some time and uh and it's it's
indeed a very they're very deep topic. There are a
lot of there's a lot of there's history, there's science,
(01:30):
there's a religion, myth uh, iconography, there a lot of psychology, psychology,
and we certainly can't do every corner of the story justice,
even in a two part Yeah, I think that it's
important to recognize upfront that that we are not experts
in uh, certainly not experts in Catholic history, which is
(01:53):
a lot of what we're going to talk about in
the first episode is about St. Francis, who is of
course beatified by the Catholic Church and one of the
best known stigmatics in history, right, and he's essentially the
patient zero for stigmata and uh. And he's an interesting
figure from historical standpoint, but also from a biological standpoint,
(02:14):
as we'll get into as as modern day historians look
back at the records and the accounts and try to
figure out what might have been going on with his body.
Uh from a medical standpoint, Yeah, he lived a really
interesting life. And you know, we can go through that
sort of chronologically today, but I think it would probably
help if we start off by just explaining stigmata as
(02:37):
a concept, uh, and and what it is, where the
idea of it came from, and and and how it
resonates with culture today. Indeed. Yeah, So to start off,
the word itself, stigmata comes from the Greek stigma uh.
And this refers to the brand with which slaves and
criminals in ancient Greece and Rome were marked. Hence our
verb stigmatized to mark as with a brand disgrace. Yeah.
(03:01):
So if you're if you are, what how does that
work in terms of stigma stigmatization of the eye Is
that there's a mark on your actual eye? Ah? You know,
I don't know, if I wonder, I wonder what the
connection is there, but I bet it's got to be
something like that. Given the synonym with markings. I know
(03:23):
that if you are suffering the the Catholic stigmata um,
your eye doctor will probably be able to do nothing. Yeah,
They're useless in that sense. They can't even stop the bleeding.
It's true. It's true. So the Catholic stigmata, which a
number of you've probably at least absorbed through art or
pop culture. You know, we're talking about the physical manifestation
(03:45):
of the wounds of Jesus Christ crucified. Yeah, specifically the
two wounds in the hand. They're usually found in the palm,
which is important. We'll come back to that later. There's
two wounds in the feet as well. These are from
the nails that were hammered through Christ's hands and feet.
And then there's a fifth wound that a lot of
(04:05):
people don't recognize, which is on his side. I don't
know if it was on his right or left side,
but he was uh lanced or speared by I believe
a Roman soldier as he was carrying the cross. I
believe it's the right side at least in various paintings,
but I'm not I'm not sure of it if there's
(04:27):
a definite right versus left, you know, cannonized. So beyond
the horrific nature of being crucified, hanging from across bleeding
from those wounds, he also had a pretty massive wound
in his side, according to the Bible and other stories,
uh that that was bleeding and would have killed them anyways, presumably.
(04:50):
And then there are a number of sort of add
on stigmata wounds you can throw in the pop up,
like the lacerations on the back from being scourged, crown
of thorns, fro thorn's, sometimes bleeding eyes are thrown in,
as well as kind of uh, that's that's more of
a garden of a cassemine, kind of a thing that
would be on top of everything else that would be rough. Yeah,
(05:12):
I mean, they really laid into the man. So there's
a lot to choose from, but certainly the the big five,
the five wounds, those are the ones that typically in
order to be actually recognized I believe by the Church
to it has to be those five wounds. Right now,
I do want to point out that stigmata, at least
as we're discussing it here, it's not necessarily a purely
(05:36):
Christian phenomenon. According to Pamela ray heat M d Uh
in her work A Mind Matter Interaction or a View
of Historical Reports, Theories and Research, she says there are
a few accounts of stigmata among Muslims and Hindus. With
Muslims the alleged stigmata resemble the battle wounds of the
prophet uh and I've personally read accounts of one if
(06:00):
twenty one century Indian thinker, philosopher ug christa Mutri undergoing
supposedly undergoing physical transformations, the swelling swellings around the chakras
in various discolorations that match up with Hindu iconography. Yeah,
so I think it's important to acknowledge that at the top, because,
as we're going to find throughout the discussion today, there
(06:21):
are multiple possible origins for stigmata. And one could potentially
be self mutilation, which might explain why in different religions
there at different points the body. Another could potentially be
psycho sematic, which would also explain that if you were
hyper fixated in your mind on specific points of your body,
(06:44):
then there's a possibility that lesions could appear. Well, it
hasn't been proven or not, but there's there's evidence that
that might be the case in some of these stigmatic cases.
And then of course, lasers from an angel right, which
I believe that most of the research refers to as
uh de ific intervention. And you know, we won't spend
(07:09):
a lot of time on that one, but it is
interesting to sort of think about it as non theologians.
Uh you know why why how that would work with
the metaphysics. Like, the best I could think of is
that it's sort of like you have you have the
the the birth and death of Christ is kind of
a patch that's applied to the existing reality. So reality
(07:29):
comes out like a game comes out, and there's some
problems with him. God says, I, really, I have got
to put out a big patch to fix fix this right,
save humanity. But before I get into that, I mean,
I guess we should obviously just do a quick run
through of how crucifixion and Jesus fit factors into the
Christian and its particularly the Catholic worldview. So to summarize,
(07:49):
you have the basic notion here that God takes human
form in the guise of Jesus. He's tortured, killed on
a Roman crucifix for the ideas that he spread, and
it's through this execution and resurrection of God incarnate that
humanity is redeemed. So God suffers bodily death so that
humans might know bodily immortality. Yeah, and and I think
(08:10):
that that's important to consider when we're talking about later
stigmatics who think of themselves as also suffering for the
sins of mankind. Um, and I I think that I
have a little bit of a logic problem with connecting
the dots there. For the stigmatics I get, I get
(08:32):
the Christian origin story and believe it or not. You know,
I I I grew up going to church reading the
Bible a lot, and UM, I have somewhat of an
affinity for those stories. I wouldn't call myself an atheist
per se, but I here's how I feel about the
whole stigmadeling. I don't necessarily believe that it's de ific
(08:57):
intervention going on here, but I will. I think I
believe that the people, most of the people who are
affected by stigmata believe it themselves. I believe that they believe. Yeah,
there's there's definitely some some fakery in there at times
with some of the stigmatics. Oh yeah, there's cases that
will come across where people were called out on it
(09:20):
and it was discovered that they were you know, it
was it was self mutilation. Yeah. Now, I mean I
like to look at it from from from different vantage points,
and of course we invite listeners to do that. As well.
But but when I try and put myself in the
mind of the of the really devoute believer and trying
to think, well, how would this work in the metaphysics
of Christianity From a purely non theologian standpoint, I think
(09:43):
of screen burn You know, the old phenomenon where you'd
have your tell your computer screen. You leave some text
up there too long and it gets burned into the screen, right,
like the reason why we have screensavers. Yeah, that it's
essentially your screensavers, not up on your your faith. And
so you're so into thinking about Christ and UH and
the iconography of Christ and holiness and and then it
(10:06):
ends up manifesting in your hands body or a more
elaborate version that came to mind is that it's uh
like a pre christ world. Is is like a game
that comes out. It comes out a little too early.
A lot of work went into creating this video game,
but there are some problems. So God says, all right,
I've got to apply a patch to this thing. So
(10:26):
it releases the patch. But the patch, as we all know,
you apply a big patch to a game, it just
creates more a little bugs. And so maybe the stigmata
is is kind of a bug in the game post patch. Uh,
that is just a sort of an accident. Right. It's
difficult because within the the actual I want to call
(10:47):
it Laura, as if we're like referring to some kind
of supernatural vampire story here. But like within the text
of the Bible, there's only one mention of stigmata, and
even that is fairly vague. I believe it's in Galashians, uh,
and it's in reference to the apostle Paul, but it's
not entirely known if he's actually talking about stigmata the
(11:09):
way that he refers to it, that uh, manifesting on
his body is the marks of Christ. Indeed, indeed, and
just to put that in the in the context of
the timeline here, Paul would have lived five c E. Right,
And the exact quote, I'm sorry I didn't have it earlier,
was I bear in my body the marks of the
Lord Jesus. Now does by marks does he mean literally
(11:34):
the wounds through the hands and feet inside or does
he mean something else, maybe a tattoo, Maybe it's metaphorical.
We'll get into that later. But I believe that it's
best if we start off with what you referred to
as patient zero with St. Francis, who was really like
the case that that that has the most not evidence
(11:54):
because you know, it happened what eight hundred nine d
years ago, but there's a lot of documentation about it
and and um discussion about the wounds. Yeah, he lived
close to eight hundred years ago, and he's he's definitely
the trends thattor, this is the patient zero for stigmata um.
(12:15):
And you know, modern historians continue to sort through early
biographies to make sense of the terms used in the
accounts given uh and in some cases make an argument
for the stigmata's roots in natural world illness rather than
supernatural miracle, which will we'll get into. But yeah, Francis
today is known as the patron saint of animals in
the environment, the father of the Franciscan Order. He was
(12:37):
born one died in twelve twenty six and the key
event in his life for the purposes of discussing stigmata
is that late in his life he's on the slopes
of Italy's Mount Laverna and he's visited by this fiery
vision of a crucified Christ flames twisting into the forum
of Sarah wings. And according to the lore, uh, this
(12:59):
is such an tense mystical experience that it inflicts the
wounds of the crucifixion right onto Francis hands and feet,
whereas it depicted in some of the paintings that we
were looking at laser beams from a fire. That's what
it looks like in the in these images. Yeah. Uh.
And and what's interesting about this is that there is
some documentation that says that there was someone with Francis
(13:22):
when this happened. And I believe the understanding was that
they didn't see this, uh, this angelic manifestatious manifestation in
the way that Francis described to them, but that they
did see him, you know, kind of fall in pain
and all of a sudden have these wounds. But makes
sense that someone would be with him, right, because Francis
was not a well man, and he was fairly infirm
(13:44):
and by late life I think he lived into his
forties maybe, so even for the time, he was only
a little bit older than us. Yeah. So if he
was to say, hey, I'm gonna go out into the
wilderness and pray a little bit, they would have said, well,
pulled on, let's send. Yeah. So Francis is uh kind
of interesting before he became, you know, the major figure
(14:08):
of the Franciscan order because he was you know, he
came from I don't know about like wealth, but he
was what we would probably referred to as middle class today. Uh,
and left that to go to war. Uh. He was
in one war, was a prisoner of war, and it
was described I think it's accurate to say that he
was fairly traumatized by that experience. Yeah, that was the
(14:31):
gist I got from the sources we're looking at. Uh.
And then he came back, had some epiphanies about life,
you know, as would be expected after an experience like that,
was sent to war again, and it was on his
way to the second War that he had a vision correct. Yeah.
And this is where accounts get kind of complicated, because
(14:52):
some accounts seemed to indicate that he just either felt
unwell or he suffered dreams about becoming unwell. It depends
on who he asked, but any rate, he definitely had
a change of heart. Uh. And maybe there was a
there was an ailment angle to that as well. There
could be, yeah, because he again, like he suffered illness
(15:13):
even from a fairly young age in life. Uh And
but basically the vision was that he shouldn't go to war,
that he should go back devote his life to the
teachings of Christ and and basically modeling on the life
of Christ. Uh And there was a point where he
went to Rome. Uh and what he took to doing
(15:34):
was begging with the poor around Rome and becoming uh
becoming a pauper, becoming homeless, essentially an understanding life from
the streets. Yeah. And in twelve or six, which is
just you know, in the in the years immediately following
his his vision initial vision in which he gave up war,
(15:54):
he begins working with lepers, which and I mean working
in close confines, with living with them, eating with them,
kissing them, etcetera. Yeah, I'd like to stop there for
a second. So I have a personal experience. When I
was fifteen years old, I went on a trip to
Katmandu in Nepal and it was it was there was
(16:18):
like a tour service. I believe, it wasn't fancy or anything,
but there was a guide who took us around Catmandu
and we did various activities. And at the time, this
was in the early nineties, Uh, there were plenty of
lepers around Catman Do and it was my first experience
even with hearing the term, much less seeing in real life.
(16:40):
It is a horrible affliction and it's um, extremely sad.
But the idea that he was, as you described, in
such close contact with these lepers of Rome and other
other towns around Italy mainly, Uh, it just it just
goes to show you, you know, what kind of a
(17:00):
man he was, how dedicated he was to to the
teachings of the church. Yeah, I mean, especially when you
think you think about how m complicated the idea of
physical ailment was at the time, because it's all tied
up with ideas about moral failing and sin as well.
So so there's the idea that not only is he
working with the disease, he's working with people that are
perhaps spiritually impure. Um. But again it's very much in
(17:25):
keeping with this, uh, this this new purpose in his life, right. Yeah,
he did not worry about being I guess tainted would
be the word physically or spiritually. So some other high
points from his life. Twelve thirteen twelve fourteen, he had
to aboard a journey to Morocco cut out he cut
out in Spain due to quote prolonged illness in which
(17:47):
he lost his speech for three days, uh twelve seventeen.
He suffered from court and fever, but accounts differ on
whether this was an actual illness or a metaphorical fever
such as a temptation, uh, you know vision experience. Yeah,
And so the resource that um we read from that
that accounts on this actually breaks down, you know, nowadays
(18:10):
when we referred to Corten fever, it's it's synonymous with malaria,
I believe. But what they were saying was that in
the Middle Ages, you know, obviously medicine wasn't where it
is now, and that there were different types of quote
unquote fevers basically that they applied to dozens of diseases,
and I think I think they've listed it as like
seventy seven different types of fever were possible at the time,
(18:33):
but there were four categories of them, and the way
that they categorized them was how often you had the fever.
So if you had it daily, it was Quotitian, if
you had it every other day, it was Tertian, and
if you had it every third day, it was corton.
And the fourth one was continuous. You just had it
all the time, all right, And then of course you
(18:54):
could just be saying I had a fever and yeah,
a mystical experience exactly. So it's really hard to tell
what they meant by this, but we're fairly certain it
wasn't malaria that they were referring to that they meant.
Around twelve twenty, he begins that you experience constant eye pain,
constant peers flowing out of his eyes, which gets back
to that, uh, your reference to stigmatics, who believed from
(19:19):
the eyes? Yeah, indeed, and that is the year that
he suffers the stigmata at Alverna. And after this, it's
it's important to note it's not just a matter of
these um uh, these these wounds or sores manifesting on
his hands and feet. He's experiencing pain all over his body.
At this point, he's he has using wounds or sores.
(19:39):
He becomes unable to walk, right. So this is something
that I wanted to point out too, is the being
unable to walk thing could be a symptom of one
of the many other illnesses that he was exposed to,
or let's let's say the stigmata happened and his feet
were pierced through as if they had been pierced by nails.
I imagine what walking would be difficult for any stigmatic Yes,
(20:02):
I would think so? Um so, I yeah, I'm kind
of wondering why that isn't a more common symptom that
we hear about as we, you know, later talk about
other stigmatics in history. Seems like they would all be
confined to a wheelchair, crutches or something. The year after that, twelve,
he receives treatment for his eye pains. And when we
(20:24):
say treatment, we're talking about the cauterization of veins from
years to eyebrows due to the constant accumulation of fluid.
And this was a standard medical procedure of the day. Uh.
But he also he felt no pain when he allegedly
when this was administered to him. And so by twelve
twenty six, he's almost completely blind. He has a wasted body,
(20:47):
his skin is darkened, he's vomiting blood, suspected liver and
spleen ailments, headaches, and that same year he dies at
age forty four, after a life spent traveling off in
far and travel in poverty, working with the sick, including
those with leopards. So, in summary, Francis was a guy
who uh lived in poverty on purpose, so subsequently probably
(21:11):
had poor nutritional practices. Uh. He had a history of
exposure to many diseases, especially leprosy, and uh he was
debilitated by these diseases through probably the last decade of
his life. Yeah, so we have we have plenty of
stuff to work with when trying to look for a
purely biological explanation for why this guy would have experienced
(21:34):
what we would come to know as the stigmata. A
couple other facts about Francis I'd like to throw out
there before we dive into the disease part. Francis, did
you know this He was the first person to create
a Nativity scene. Yeah, apparently he was the one who
had the idea for that around Christmas time, you know,
replicating the Nativity. Uh. And it was only two years
(21:58):
after he died that he became a saying. He was
pronounced to saying by the Pope. Yeah, fast turned around.
You don't get back today, right, I would say that
that's I don't know, Pope John Paul. But it was
pretty quick for him. But even still I don't. I
don't think it was within two years. I mean, it's
also I think important to note about Francis that most
of the sources we were looking at, uh, there was
(22:19):
no indication that he made any personal claims to have
suffered or experienced some sort of supernatural Christ like wound
in his body. Yeah. That's what's really interesting about this
is a lot of the accounts and the research that
looks into the various evidence is that Francis himself was
very reluctant to talk about the stigmata UH, and in fact,
(22:44):
you know, didn't want it to be publicized would be
the wrong word because they didn't exactly have mass media then,
but he didn't want it to be something that was
spoken of. He was actually worried that if it was
talked about, that his um that he you know, would
be in trouble, that the grace of God that was
stowed upon him would be taken away from him. UM.
So he tried to hide the wounds. And there's references
(23:06):
to him being ill towards the end of his life,
you know, laying in bed, uh, monks tending to him,
and you know, one I think was like maybe washing
him or or or reaching to to uh move his
torso and touched the wound in his side, and he,
you know, gasped out in pain. But he did not
want this monk to say anything about it. It was
(23:28):
not Francis's idea. I think if we were going to
say Francis faked this whole thing so that he seemed
like he was a saint, right, it doesn't match up
with the um the stories of the man and other
occasions that he did not seem like the kind of
person with the quality of character that would make up
a story like this, because he didn't even want other
(23:50):
people to know about it. Yeah, it wasn't until October three,
twelve six that we know that was the first written
account of Saint France just having experienced some sort of
miraculous wounds. Uh. And this comes to us from the
writings of brother Elias. He says, and is that? And
now I announced to you a great joy, a new miracle.
(24:11):
The world has never heard of such a miracle except
in the Son of God, who is Christ, our Lord.
A little while before his death, our brother and father
appeared crucified, bearing in his body the five wounds, which
are truly the stigmata of Christ his hands and feet,
where as if punctured by nails, pierced on both sides
and had scars that were the black color of nails.
His side appeared pierced by a lance and often gave
(24:33):
forth droplets of blood. And it's important to note that
line about a new miracle, um, you know, an exceptional miracle,
because it it drives home that this was this was
a pretty powerful thing to claim about somebody. This was
This was a potentially dangerous idea at the time, absolutely
because uh and in fact, there were you know, other
(24:56):
monks that doubted francis Is authenticity with this and a
I believe the way that they described it was that
he was trying to be a quote new God. Yeah,
and that like there was the iconography surrounding this event
and specifically stigmatics was questionable because it was drawing attention
away from Christianity itself. Yeah, I mean, because because the
(25:18):
initial reaction would be like, are you trying to single
white female? What's going on? As Arnold I. Davidson points
out in his article Miracles of Bodily Transformation or How
Saint Francis received the Stigmata, he said that Francis. Stigmata
was written off at the time as we just saw
as a unique miracle, indeed a miracle greater than any
other miracle. And even then, to counter doubts and denials
(25:42):
in the day at that time required nine papal bulls. Um,
so I have some you know, some big authoritatory statements,
some big press releases got down from from the pope's
office saying no, this is the real, this is for real. Yeah,
and from my reading it sounds like, um, the popes
at the time of his life had met with him
(26:04):
personally on several occasions too, so they were well aware
of this. It wasn't as if he was just you know,
someone who is rather low on the echelon of the
Catholic hierarchy. And various other accounts in the time of Stigmata,
we were often just completely thrown out, just rejected as
as you know, scandals or even potentially heretical, because the
(26:26):
basic idea is you're presenting France is not only as saintly,
but but almost as this new Christ. Yeah. And we
should say here too that uh, it's somewhat misleading to
describe St. Francis as the first stigmatic because there were
between Christ's death and between St. Francis's life there were
(26:47):
cases of quote unquote stigmata. But we'll get into it
later about whether that actually meant wounds as we come
to understand them as being stigmatic or not. Uh, it
could mean many other things based on the literature at
the time. One thing I wanted to talk about with St.
Francis is um the description of his stigmata by Thomas
(27:11):
Solano in this book that he wrote about St. Francis,
The Life of St. Francis from eight I think you
referenced this as well, and then notes the the way
that he described the wounds in the hands was not
just that they were holes like we would imagine from
like a horror movie or something, but that you could
actually see the points of the nails protruding from the flesh.
(27:34):
That they were like the nail points were pushing up
through the flesh and black underneath, as if you know,
there were like ghost nails there. Uh. And that I
mean we think of stigmata today as being a kind
of supernatural, scary type symbolism. You know that you would
(27:54):
have you would see in a horror movie, But I
can't imagine that that seems so much scarier to me.
You know, I'm surprised that some some horror director hasn't
glommed onto that yet and pulled that into the content
that they've produced, because it's just the idea of these
permanent nails just kind of just barely pushing up under
(28:17):
your skin. It's cruciating. Yeah, and it's the important to
hear as well that some of the accounts vary on
exactly what the wounds of St. Francis consisted, often in
the same way that the stigmatic traditions to follow. You'd
see everything from you know, slight blemishes, um and little
sores counting stigmata to actual holes or the manifestation of nails. Right. Yeah,
(28:39):
sometimes it's just like purple marks in the palms of
your hands. All right, you know, let's take a quick break.
When we come back, we will jump into some of
the various disease explanations for the stigmata experience by St. Francis.
Of all right, we're back, so we're gonna we're gonna
(29:08):
pick through some of the possible disease explanations here for St. Francis.
Real quick. We mentioned that he traveled into some of
the swampy territory in Italy had turned back from going
to Morocco. So there's one possibility that he suffered from malaria. Now,
to touch back upon what we talked about earlier, quartaine
(29:31):
fever and malaria sort of understood as different things at
the time, but still he may have contracted malaria. Yeah.
The the late historian Dr Edward Frederick Hartung made out
a strong case for malignant malaria as being the the
cause of these uh, these these bodily manifestation um, though
(29:53):
rarely encountered with today's treatment. One complication of malignant malaria
infection is the purplish hemorrhage of blood through the skin,
also known is papa uh. And what's more, propera usually
distribute symmetrically according to the heart, tongue, on the hands,
and on the feet. So is it possible that these
(30:15):
supernatural wounds were mere hemorrhages caused by malaria. Yeah, And
propara or as I pronounced it, I think properah are
just one of many types of lesions that can form
as a result of the various diseases we're going to
talk about today, and they're they're the larger of the
categories of legions that can form on your body as
(30:35):
a result. Now, it's worth pointing out that there's some
problems with the with the malaria argument. According to Johann
shops Line and Daniel P. Selmasti, it was until the
seventeenth century the physicians could distinguish between the fevers of
malaria and other fevers. The true cause of malaria wasn't
known until the nineteenth century. The word malaria didn't even
exist until the six so we we can't be for sure.
(30:58):
And also malaria doesn't fact the bones. And then as
we'll get into uh shortly, uh, there's some skeletal evidence
that seems to point in the direction of a particular ailment. Right,
that's somewhat important for as evidence forensic evidence in the
case of Saint Francis um other possibilities wants. Some have
(31:18):
argued tuberculosis um and it's certainly a statistical possibility, but
the chances are slim since it didn't become a huge
issue um until in Europe, until the urbanization of the
sixteenth through nineteen centuries. Yeah, and one of the interesting
things about the tuberculosis argument is that some sources, you know,
after his death suggested that it's possible that he contracted
(31:39):
tuberculosis from his mother because his mother was from France
and it was more common there. Tuberculosis was more common
in France. Um, but most people criticize this as not
being legitimate claim. Is you know that that's just just like, well, yeah,
you know, maybe it's possible, but is it Is it
(31:59):
really likely, especially compared with some of the other candidates. Yeah,
there's also speculation that he was a mnemic as well,
but again this is all after his life. There's no
evidence of either of these things in the actual written
literature of the time of people who lived around St. Francis. Yeah,
which is largely all we have to go on. So
others have made cases for brucellosis, humophilia, herpie simplex. But
(32:25):
the really convincing one, the one we ended up spending
a lot more time on, is leprosy, because again, he
spent a lot of time with leopards, living with them,
eating with them, coming into visual physical contact with them. Yeah,
and is you know, the ethos of his life was
to basically live like them, you know, to take on
the same pains that they had taken on. So it
(32:47):
seems to me that in his mind that contracting leprosy
was was not you know, a punishment per se, It
was part of the life that he wanted to lead,
caring for the ill and for the poor. And there
was a lot of it at the time too. It
was common in medieval Europe. It was common in thirteenth
century Italy, and there were six leper houses in a
(33:10):
c c alone, you know. Interesting a side note about
leprosy in in Europe. Leprosy and Europe declined significantly after
the Black Plague of through three, right, And I believe
the idea there is that because lepers were already susceptible
to illness and weak, that they were you know, largely
(33:33):
killed off by the plague, almost entirely, right, so that
there there wasn't a lot of opportunity to contract it otherwise. Yeah,
and uh, and and there's also a case to be
made that the process of segregating lepers actually decreased transmission
increases in dietary vitamin C gave some degree of protection
against it. And since leprosy into NTB are both caused
(33:54):
by different species of the same bacterium, the rise of TB,
as we discussed that comes with the organization might have
provided protection against leprosy due to cross immunity. So you
have immune responses that are stimulated to fight one infection, uh,
and they combat the other. And lepers often contracted TV,
and those with TV seldom contracted leprosy, even in places
(34:17):
where both were endemic. But to clarify, Francis lived almost
a hundred years before the Black plague really kicked in, right,
So we can't really factor black plague into it. That's
what's whine. It doesn't really come up as one of
the potential possibilities. But I think that does help to
underline how how complicated it begins to be when you
start looking back at a disease in history, because it
(34:41):
of course doesn't exist in isolation. Yeah. Absolutely, Oh, this
reminds me. There is an interesting factoid that you told
me before we started recording that sort of places St.
Francis in history, and we're talking about where he is
in relation to the Black plague. Talk about Genghis Khan. Oh, Yeah,
the the year St. Francis was born two, Genghis Khan
(35:03):
was twenty years old at the time, So that kind
of gives you a little bit of a reference point, yeah,
particularly if you're may be more familiar with with Asian
history versus European. Alright, So the case for leprosy um.
A lot of this comes from paper by Flatson and
soul Mastery, who I mentioned earlier, and I'll make sure
to include a link to to to that resource on
(35:23):
the landing page of this episode of Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot Com in case you want to check
it out. But they contended what could have been going
on here was that it was something known as tuberculoid leprosy. Uh.
They contended to medieval physicians only understood one form of
leprosy really, and that's the disfiguring lepromattis, of which we'll discuss,
and they might have missed this more subtle tuberculoid kind
(35:45):
of leprosy that that he might have had. So as
like a lay person not particularly understanding these diseases up
close and personal, other than my experience of seeing lepers
when I was younger, I'm a mad inning that. Let's
say this was the case. He had lesions on his
hands and feet and maybe on his side, but he
(36:08):
probably also had lesions across his whole body, right right, Yeah,
that's that's the the takeaway that I get I get
from this, Okay. So, I mean most people out there
are probably thinking of leprosy as just like digits fall off,
parts of your face fall off, things like that. That's
sort of the popular culture understanding of it. But these
(36:29):
these open wounds are popping up everywhere on the body,
not just it wasn't necessarily and in fact, in some
of the descriptions of St. Francis that we we read
for this, that they described all of the wounds on
his body and the oozing sores and the pain that
he was constantly in. Yeah. Now, the Greeks and Romans,
they had three different terms for leprosy. There was a
(36:50):
lepra because the scaly, non leprous skin disease, elephant titus,
which was actually true leprosy, and as as well as philaresis,
a parasitic roundworm infection and also loose, a condition that
might link to terpuloid leprosy, described in the work of
(37:11):
a second century Greek Christian philosopher who was not actually
widely read interest in his own time and virtually unknown
to thirteenth century Europe. So it's another case where there's
one pocket of understanding about leprosy, but it's not even
widely known at the time. Um. And you know, to
further complicate things, you get overlapping terminology and medical texts
(37:32):
available at the time that they lack the medical knowledge
to properly diagnose anything other than the classic just facially
disfiguring a leprosy that we've discussed here. So okay, So,
like I said, I'm sort of a layperson when it
comes to this. Let's go back to you mentioned bacteria
as being part of leprosy, So what actually causes It's
(37:53):
a micro bacterium, right, yeah, yeah, let's yeah, we should
get down to brass tacks on that leprosy is caused
by the bacteria Microbacterium lepre and it's highly infectious, easily transmitted,
but only a small percentage of individuals actually thought clinically
significant disease. The incubation period between five and twenty years,
(38:13):
and the nutritional status of the infect it plays a
big role in whether it actually progresses in One of
the things we know about St. Francis was that he
was purposely limiting his nutrition as part of his life
of poverty. Yeah, he's living poor, he's he's also you know,
going out in the wilderness, um, you know who often
involves fasting. Yeah, something to keep Yeah, yeah, all the
(38:35):
fasting that he did as well, that's true. I hadn't
thought about that far. He definitely wasn't like taking a
multi complex vitamin, No, definitely not so so. Yeah, diet
affects the progress, and progress is key in lepro mattis
leprosy again, they really disfiguring when the immune system is
just completely overwhelmed. The full range of disfiguring and debilitating
(38:55):
symptoms are possible. Nodules, mutilating lesions on the face, also
ripheral nerve infections. And this is the you know, the
one that the physicians of the day was the most
That's what I mean. I didn't get up close and personal,
but that was what I witnessed when I spent time
in Nepal. Yeah, this is the the just the wretched,
worst leprosy infection to get. But in tuberculoid leprosy, the
(39:18):
body's immune system effectively staves off the greater infection by
keeping the infestation isolated to the nerves. So you have flat,
slightly discolored patches on the skin with a decreased sensation. Again. Wait,
you know mentioned earlier how he supposedly did not feel
the pain of his his eye treatment. Yeah, this is
(39:40):
like if you're a Game of Thrones fan, this is
like what do they call it? Gray scale? Yeah, yeah,
that's where George Martin got the idea for that. From that,
either from there or no, it would have the other
timeline doesn't support it. But there was an episode of
Look Around You where they covered the case of Cobb. Oh,
(40:00):
I've not heard of this, um fabulous British comedy series
with kind of science vibe to it. Be an individual
whose skin was turning into rocks cobbles, and you see
him and he's basically a pile of rocks setting on
a sound stage talking o. Um. But anyway, pop culture, way,
as we deal with these horrific ailments that have destroyed mankind.
(40:25):
So yeah, tuberculoid leprosy, the infected nervous system UM is
doing what it can to fight it off, to to
keep it isolated, but it can result also in neurotic pain,
decreased sensitivity in the toes and fingers. And between these
two types there's borderline leprosy, which you know kind of
a little bit of both, right, Uh and uh, you
(40:46):
know we mentioned those ailes, those eye ailments. Uh, it
also affects the eyes of leprosy cases involves some sort
of eye issues, infection of the cranial nerves. Uh, they
can cease blinking, producing in producing instance of civity to damage. Well,
and not being able to blink would definitely explain why
he was constantly tearing up exactly. Also direct infection of
(41:08):
the eyes due to you know, damage from fingers, uh,
damage to the tear docks, excessive tearing, puss formation, and
again loss of finger digits because because again it's it's
it's affecting the nervous system and causing a decreased sensitivity
to toes and fingers, which in the case of someone
(41:28):
with leprosy, can result in uh, an easier injury of
those digits. So let's hone in on that for a minute.
As we referenced earlier, there's evidence that Francis himself was
missing digits and we know this because was it in
the early eighteen hundreds. They I'm not sure if they
(41:51):
exhumed his corps or not, but they examined his corpse
and we're able to find that he was missing several digits.
Is that correct? Based on descriptions and and later as
some actual photographs of St. Francis's skeletal remains, there's possible
evidence of leprosy and some of the missing finger bones,
eight of ten metacarpals, those are the closest to the palm. Okay,
(42:14):
if you look down at your hand now are present,
and only sixteen of twenty eight philangial bones those are
the two outer bones of each finger. Only sixteen out
of eight are present on the body. So help me
to understand this for a second. Here if again, like
let's go with the d I f uh interpretation here
(42:35):
for a moment, if uh wounds had manifested in his
palms and feet, as if nails had been driven through them,
or even let's say, for the sake of argument, that
he self mutilated and he hammered nails through his hands
and feet himself, wouldn't there be evidence of that as
well in the bones that they found Potentially? Yeah, I mean, like,
(42:57):
you know, it just comes down to how it would
have been as Yeah, but but yeah, there was from
what I was reading, there's no evidence of that from
from looking at the bones there's also nothing, nothing to
suggest that they were taking his relics or loss, because
that's probably some people's minds with the holy dude, someone
probably right, somebody's wearing a necklace of the pinky of St. Francis.
(43:19):
And then finally from the body, there also appears to
be an enlargement of nutrient for amina openings and bones
for nourishing blood vessels that could be possible evidence of
leprosy having ravaged body. Okay, so if we review these
diseases that we spoke about about possibilities, We talked about malaria,
and talked about tuberculosis and leprosy, leprosy, there's a strong
(43:42):
case to be made. There seems to be a lot
of evidence pointing that way, both in the literature and
in actually looking at his body, that he had contracted
leprosy from the many years of working with the sick.
He was probably a leper himself. It sounds like for
almost a decade, maybe longer, because he had been ill
(44:04):
even before. In some cases there's there's accounts of his
illness before he even you know, took a vow of poverty.
Um maybe you know, who knows, Maybe that's why what
led him to taking a vow of poverty. Was that
he was what he was sick. So but at the
end of the day, it really seems like leprosy is
the most logical explanation. I think so. But based on
(44:28):
what we looked at, like, that's the one that seems
that there's the most evidence for, and it matches up
with his timeline the best. The physical evidence, what little
we have seems to seems to support it. Uh. And
you know, and again fasting poor diet nutrition it it
would have made him even more susceptible to it. And
he was. He was not a well man for most
of his life anyway. Now, this isn't a discount that
(44:50):
this was a pretty saintly dude, as I would put it. Uh,
you know, I mean, it sounds like from all accounts
that he was the real deal. He was genuinely very
uh generous man. Uh and who did live his life
by the teachings that he followed. Um. But that doesn't
(45:11):
necessarily mean that the de ific intervention was a result
of what we think of as his stigmata today. Yeah,
and you know, you look back on it, and I mean,
on one level, you can sort of look at the stigmata,
the holy stigmata that the tradition that follows is kind
of a pr campaign because you know, at the time,
(45:32):
leprosy was seen as as a disease of the soul.
It's not the kind of thing a holy man would have.
So to heal with this juxtaposition, you have to come
up with a mystical interpretation of what's happening. Why. It
comes down to, like, why do bad things happen to
good people? Why? Why does something this horrible happen to
somebody who's doing such good work in the world. Yeah,
and you say, well, maybe it's not a bad thing.
(45:53):
Maybe it's exactly Yeah, he's carrying the the he's carrying
the marks of Christ, who was also you know, wounded
in service to mankind. Yeah, that could be definitely the
way that is interpreted, especially because all of the research
that I saw, there was never a mention by any
(46:14):
of the other clergy that Francis was a leper. There
was just a mention of his various illnesses and the
symptoms that he had for you know, many years, right,
And you know, you know, naturally we can never know
for certain about any of this um but you know,
when you look at this, this, uh, the supernatural explanation.
(46:34):
When you look at the leprosy explanation there, you could
argue they're kind of shades of the same thing, because
presumably this, you know, the creator God in this scenario
would have sent the Sarah, who sent the Sarah would
have also created the protozoans responsible for the malaria or
the or the or the the bacteria that caused the leprosy.
And uh, you know, in Francis seems to suggest as
(46:58):
much himself. Again he he never actually talked about his uh,
you know, any mystical wounds, as we already mentioned. Right,
he didn't flaunt it, right, but but but here's just
a little something that he said, uh in in the
Little Flowers of St. Francis, he says, my dear son,
be patient, because the weaknesses of the body are given
to us in this world by God for the salvation
(47:19):
of the soul. So they are of great merit when
they are born patiently. So I mean, ultimately, you have
a dude that suffers from leprosy working with lepers uh
in the name of God. And you know, if that's
if that's the actual explanation, if that's actually what happened
instead of some supernatural explanation. It seems to me to
(47:39):
be perfectly in keeping with that with the values of
that faith. Now we've taken a look at patient zero.
This is the most I don't know popular isn't the
right word I would use, but well known example of
stigmata and history, and we've discussed two possibilities for its
disease or deific interve and intervention. Uh. In the second
(47:59):
part of this episode, we're going to talk about to
other possibilities. There's psychosomatic possibilities and then there's also the
possibility of self mutilation. Right, so we'll we'll get into
the psychology and the science of those topics in the
next episode. In the meantime, be sure to check out
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where you'll
find all of our podcast episodes, videos, blog post links
(48:21):
out to those social media accounts, as well as the
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(48:44):
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