0:00

Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. At Mint Mobile, we

0:02

like to do the opposite of what big

0:04

wireless does. They charge you a lot, we

0:06

charge you a little. So naturally, when they

0:08

announced they'd be raising their prices due to

0:10

inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due

0:12

to not hating you. That's right, we're cutting

0:15

the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a

0:17

month to just $15 a month. a

0:20

month. Give it a try

0:22

at mintmobile.com/switch. $45 up

0:24

front for three months plus taxes and fees. Promote for new customers

0:26

for limited time. Unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month. Slows. Full

0:28

turns at mintmobile.com. One in

0:31

three women and one in four men

0:33

experienced domestic abuse in their lifetime, and

0:35

nearly half of survivors delay leaving because

0:38

they can't bring their pets with them.

0:40

Purina started the Purple Leash Project to

0:42

help eliminate one of the many barriers

0:44

domestic abuse survivors face. A lack of

0:47

pet friendly domestic violence shelters. Through the

0:49

Purple Leash Project, Purina is helping to

0:51

create more pet friendly domestic violence shelters

0:54

across the country. So abuse survivors and

0:56

their pets can escape and heal together.

0:58

Visit purina.com/Purple to get involved. Hey,

1:01

it's Paige from Giggly Squad. Everybody knows about

1:03

Daphne. They know I just got a cat.

1:05

I would literally die for her.

1:07

I was so nervous about the litter

1:09

box portion of getting a cat. And

1:11

honestly, I think it was like the

1:14

number one thing that was keeping me

1:16

from being a cat owner. Litter

1:18

Robot by Whisker is the solution to

1:21

all of your litter box problems. Self

1:24

cleaning technology automatically cleans after every use.

1:26

So your cat will always have a

1:28

fresh bed of litter and your friends

1:30

won't think that your house smells like

1:32

a litter box. I

1:34

feel like Daphne is unique

1:37

in so many ways, but I actually feel like Daphne

1:40

is more of a clean freak than other

1:42

cats. I don't know why I feel like

1:44

that, but I feel like she gets especially

1:46

happy when I clean up her area. So

1:49

the fact that her litter is always

1:51

rotating. I know that when she's

1:53

in there, she feels clean and that means

1:55

a lot to me. There are over 1 million

1:58

happy pets and pet parents who have. upgraded

2:00

to Litter-Robot. So what are you waiting

2:02

for? Right now, Whisker is offering $75

2:04

off Litter-Robot bundles. And

2:07

as a special offer to gigglers, you can get

2:09

an additional $50 when

2:12

you go to

2:14

stopscooping.com/Acast. That's an

2:16

additional $50 off

2:19

when you go

2:21

to stopscooping.com/Acast. stopscooping.com/Acast.

2:43

At a place called Golgotha in Hebrew,

2:45

which is to say the place of

2:47

the skull, they crucified him. Pontius

2:50

Pilate wrote a sign and put it above

2:52

his head. Jesus of

2:54

Nazareth, the King of the Jews.

2:57

And sitting down, they watched him there. From

3:00

the sixth to the ninth hour, there was

3:02

darkness over all the land. At

3:04

about the ninth hour, the man we call

3:07

Jesus cried with a loud voice saying, Eli,

3:10

Eli, lama, sackbaktani. My

3:13

God, my God, why has thou

3:15

forsaken me? Jesus, when

3:17

he cried aloud once more, passed from

3:19

this world to the next. So the

3:22

story goes. And behold,

3:24

the veil of the temple was rent

3:26

in twain from the top to the

3:28

bottom and the earth did quake.

3:33

The image of Christ's crucifixion has been

3:35

burned into the minds of Christians, blood

3:37

dripping from the crown of thorns from his

3:40

side and above all from the wounds in

3:42

his palms and feet where he was nailed

3:44

to the cross. I

3:46

know because as a little boy, I

3:48

would spend time staring at the ever

3:50

present crucified Christ, that those

3:52

bloody wounds are haunting. And so perhaps

3:54

it is not so surprising that they

3:57

have taken on a life of their

3:59

own. In May 1841, in

4:03

the sanctified wilderness of Tyrol, Italy,

4:05

an English aristocrat is stooping

4:13

inside a dark cottage, a hovel, some

4:15

might call it. There

4:17

he comes face to face with what he

4:19

called the most extraordinary object in existence, the

4:22

supernatural personification of the sufferings

4:24

of the Redeemer. For

4:27

lying in her bed was young Maria

4:29

Lazary, 25 years old,

4:32

her palms bleeding visibly where the wounds

4:34

of Christ had miraculously appeared on her

4:37

flesh. This

4:40

is the story of Christ's wandering wounds.

4:42

This is the history of the stigmata.

4:56

Hello and welcome to After

4:59

Dark, I'm Maddy. And

5:12

I'm Antony. And today it is

5:14

the history that you never knew

5:16

you needed, the stigmata, the wounds

5:18

of Christ that have appeared miraculously

5:20

on people's bodies from the

5:23

Middle Ages until today. The

5:25

next slide for this topic is Dr.

5:27

Christoph Smeyers, who is the author of

5:29

Supernatural Body's Stigmata in Modern Britain and

5:31

Ireland. Christoph, we've been friends on Twitter,

5:33

I think, for quite a while now,

5:35

but it's nice to finally meet you

5:37

almost in the flesh. We're doing this

5:39

remotely. Welcome to After Dark. Thank

5:42

you. Thank you for inviting me. We're absolutely thrilled to

5:44

have you here. Now, let's take a moment and go

5:46

into this topic at a very

5:48

basic level so that we're all on

5:51

the same page. Can you explain to

5:53

us what stigmata actually are? That's immediately

5:55

an incredibly complex question because, yes, Christ

5:57

goes on the cross and he is...

6:00

wounded with nails and with a spear. The nails

6:02

go through his hands and his feet, spear

6:04

goes into his side, he has a crown of thorns

6:06

on which makes his forehead bleed. Those

6:09

would be the wounds of Christ, those are called

6:11

stigmata, which then have a

6:13

history of manifesting on the bodies of

6:15

humans throughout history from indeed about the

6:17

13th century on. Anyway, that's the very

6:20

narrow definition of what stigmata are. There

6:22

is a much wider definition, which means

6:25

all kinds of pictorial skin markings that have

6:27

something to do with Christ's life. So

6:30

flowers that appear as

6:32

if they are drawn with blood on

6:34

someone's arm. I've seen pictures of backs

6:36

where there are whole flower decorations which

6:38

are bleeding, which refer to roses in

6:40

the tulips and all other flowers that

6:42

have specific devotional significance for Christians. So

6:44

stigmata is not, yeah, there's a lot

6:46

of different types, you would say. Now,

6:48

I was explaining to Christoph before we

6:51

started recording that I have

6:53

some first-hand experience of this, not as a

6:55

receiver of the stigmata, but there was a

6:57

woman who lived up the road whose name

6:59

I'll omit for now. But she

7:02

claimed to have the stigmata,

7:04

and I have seen this,

7:07

well, I have seen gloves over the

7:09

hands, bloodied gloves over the hands that

7:11

claimed to have the stigmata. And actually,

7:13

I've just also remembered that

7:16

members of my family, would, older

7:18

members of my family, would have given her

7:20

credit for healing, who was

7:22

an ill member of my family at

7:25

one point, but certainly that person did

7:27

recover. But that's very local to me.

7:29

But can you tell us about who

7:31

is the first person to

7:33

receive the stigmata? How does this

7:36

start? It starts in the 13th

7:38

century with a monk called Francis

7:40

of Assisi, who walks up to

7:42

Mount Laverna, needs a rest, sits down

7:44

on a rock, and an angel

7:46

appears in the clouds and pierces

7:48

his hands and feet, and he is stigmatized.

7:50

And that happens in 1222, on the 17th

7:52

of September, two

7:55

years before his death. And he's the first

7:57

one to be blessed in such a way

7:59

with a very angelic intervention, because before then

8:01

there were people who did it to themselves.

8:03

I think a couple of years before there

8:05

was a church council just outside Oxford actually,

8:08

where a guy appeared who had

8:11

crucified himself basically and said he was

8:13

Christ reborn and he was punished for

8:15

it, according to some accounts even punished

8:17

by crucifying in a second time, which

8:19

I feel is a little bit too on

8:21

the nose to be true. But anyway, once

8:24

Francis of Assisi is stigmatized, dies, he sets

8:26

a tradition in motion which makes stigmata very

8:29

devotionally significant because they are

8:31

immediately recognizable. Christ

8:33

on the cross is one image every Christian knows.

8:36

You could say it's the very center of the whole

8:38

religion. So for people to emulate that and

8:41

almost be an embodiment or

8:43

a physical way of

8:45

connecting to Christ directly is hugely

8:47

significant. It changes the way people

8:50

experience Christianity, you could say. I

8:53

mentioned, Christoph, that in the specific case

8:55

that I'm aware of, there

8:57

was this additional miraculous

9:00

element to what this person claimed they could do.

9:02

In this case, it was healing as far as

9:04

I'm aware. I'm not sure if there was any

9:06

others, but certainly that one I know I can

9:08

remember was attached to it. Are

9:11

miracles something that are associated with the

9:13

stigmata all the time or do they

9:15

sometimes just occur for the sake of

9:17

occurrence? Usually it's one symptom

9:19

of many, I would say. And usually

9:21

it's also the culmination point of a

9:23

series of mystical and mysterious things happening

9:26

to a person. So it usually starts

9:28

with diabolic or demonic attacks. That's usually

9:30

how supernatural suffering begins. If I just

9:32

think of a concrete example, there was

9:34

a Victorian school teacher called Teresa Higginson,

9:37

who for years was

9:39

tormented by demons and the devil

9:41

himself before that changed. And she

9:43

started fasting also supernaturally. So he

9:45

claimed to go without food and

9:47

drink for weeks, months. And eventually

9:49

through all that suffering, at the

9:51

end, Christ intervenes and says, that

9:53

type of suffering is over now.

9:56

Here is some proper redemptive suffering.

9:58

Take the wounds of Christ. and

10:00

sharing that and become something more meaningful

10:02

to your neighbors as well who've been

10:04

suffering along with you know with Teresa

10:06

Higginson because to be honest being assaulted

10:08

by demons every night it's kind of

10:10

a nuisance if you live right next

10:12

door because the furniture bashes around and

10:14

there's a lot of screams. I've had

10:16

neighbors like that before definitely. But yes

10:19

there's this there's also like what you

10:21

say about healing that's quite that's quite

10:24

stereotypical I would say or it happens

10:26

quite often things like becoming clairvoyant being

10:28

able to prophesize things so

10:31

you become a community figure in those types

10:33

of ways as well. And do you think it's

10:35

fair to say Christophe that your your body

10:37

then becomes part of the community in a

10:39

way that it hasn't necessarily been

10:41

before and I'm thinking specifically you've mentioned a part

10:44

well obviously we have Frances of Assisi but

10:47

the other examples that we're going

10:49

to talk about and that you've just mentioned there are of

10:51

women and I wonder if there's something about access

10:54

to women's bodies in that community and

10:56

indeed with Anthony's example it's a woman

10:58

as well right so is

11:00

there something about gender and body and religion

11:02

intersecting here what's going on there? That's the

11:05

that's the one million dollar question because when

11:07

you look at so I've been part of

11:09

a team for a couple of years now

11:11

they have looked at stigmata across Europe mostly

11:14

for the 19th and the 20th centuries and what

11:16

we see across hundreds of cases is that about

11:18

95% of them are women are

11:21

young women as well once puberty

11:23

starts usually girls start having stigmata

11:26

and they indeed they become a focal point or

11:28

their bodies become a focal point for the communities

11:31

mostly because in the period that we study

11:34

we're not talking about nuns anymore but we're

11:36

talking about lay Catholics or lay

11:38

Christians who experience these

11:40

things at home and that becomes known

11:42

very quickly and people tend to travel

11:44

into people's bed into a stigmatic bedroom

11:46

basically to see these things with her

11:49

own eyes and also demanding access to

11:51

the miracle so there

11:53

are many cases where the woman in

11:55

question while she is bleeding supernaturally is

11:58

told or forced to show the

12:00

wounds even if she doesn't want to. That's

12:02

problematic in all kinds of ways. On the

12:04

other hand you could also stigmatize the body

12:07

becomes part of a community also in a

12:09

different way because you could almost call it

12:11

a transnational republic of stignatics. These people were

12:13

in spiritual contact with each other sometimes across

12:16

national boundaries, on a

12:18

Friday afternoon when usually

12:21

around three o'clock when a stigmatic sounds bleeding and

12:23

the wounds open. Some of them go into a

12:25

sort of trance and connect with

12:27

someone else for example in Italy who's experiencing

12:29

the same thing at the same time and

12:32

they communicate on a different plane altogether.

12:34

I will say there's also a

12:36

world in which it's a nice little side hustle because I

12:38

know there was a charge that the

12:40

lady that I'm referencing she definitely had a

12:42

little a little pot that you had to

12:45

pop some money into to avail of the

12:47

the visual or the healing from what I

12:49

remember. But let's talk about another younger girl

12:51

because we want to talk about that kind

12:53

of overarching example and we

12:55

spoke about Maria Lazari in Italy. Can you

12:57

tell us a little bit about her case

12:59

because we start to see the idea of

13:01

a stigmatic change slightly in the 19th century

13:04

and this is a good example of that

13:06

isn't it? Yeah so even

13:08

though stigmata have been going on for centuries

13:10

since in France it really becomes

13:12

a public phenomenon in the early 19th century after

13:14

the Napoleonic Wars when travel but not

13:17

coincidentally I think when travel becomes a

13:19

little bit safer people tend to move

13:21

around the continent a bit more you

13:23

get pockets especially near national

13:26

borders I would say so as the map

13:28

of Europe is being redrawn here in northern

13:30

Italy for example which is contested territory between

13:33

Italy and Austria etc but it's also quite

13:35

a remote area so you're talking about the

13:37

Alps there are little villages they're quite isolated

13:39

they're hard to get to and

13:42

the idea very quickly

13:44

emerges that in those pockets of

13:47

European civilization the pure

13:49

Catholicism still exists it's

13:51

untouched by modernity in these not

13:53

good again not coincidentally in these

13:56

villages around the 1830s several young

13:58

girls suddenly appear to have stigmata

14:00

and one of them is Maria

14:03

Dominica Lazzieri who experiences

14:05

it in a really visceral way.

14:08

There are gradations of suffering and

14:10

there are gradations of blood loss

14:12

throughout stigmatization. She's definitely in the

14:14

higher tier I would say so

14:16

she bleeds a lot. She's incapacitated,

14:19

she's bedridden and every week

14:21

on Fridays she bleeds and

14:24

very quickly she is visited

14:26

by romantic poets, by Catholic

14:29

doctors as well, physicians, writers who

14:31

see her as a type of

14:33

romantic ideal as well because

14:35

she's there among the jagged peaks of the

14:37

Alps bleeding Christ's wounds and

14:40

attracting more and more devotees

14:43

that have this quite medieval,

14:45

there's a medieval sense in the air.

14:47

So she becomes an international phenomenon very

14:49

quickly because people travel

14:51

to her also from Britain. British

14:53

Catholics after 1829,

14:55

so when Catholicism becomes emancipated, are

14:58

very eager and I would say are potentially

15:01

even more Catholic than the continental Catholics in

15:03

that they go looking for

15:05

this type of thing as a confirmation that

15:07

their faith has been true all along and

15:10

it's justified and it shows it's proof

15:12

that their God still can work his

15:14

work in the material world. So

15:17

you have a whole series of diary

15:19

accounts of British families traveling into

15:21

the Alps looking at

15:23

people like Lazzeri, forcing their children into

15:25

these bedrooms as well and going on

15:27

their knees and praying basically and asking

15:30

the stigmatic to pray for England because

15:32

England needs help and like you say there is a

15:36

business aspect to it

15:38

because very quickly people are painters

15:40

and illustrators are setting up in

15:42

the bedroom, are illustrating her, it

15:44

becomes an iconography I guess of

15:46

what stigmata are supposed to look

15:49

like in the early 19th century.

15:52

I'm looking at one of those images now

15:54

actually Christophe of young Maria and she's, it's

15:57

a 19th century print, she's in bed.

15:59

she sat up against a pillow. She's

16:01

in this quite rudimental wooden bed in

16:03

what looks like a wooden panelled room

16:05

in a fairly mundane lower class house.

16:08

This doesn't look like a particularly theatrical

16:10

space and yet there is something of

16:12

the theatrical about this. And at the

16:14

end of the bed, her sheets have

16:16

been pulled back and you can see

16:19

the stigmata on her feet and also at least

16:22

I think I'm peering close to it now, but I think

16:24

at least one hand if not both of her hands are

16:26

visible at the other end. Do

16:28

you find that there is an element

16:31

of choreography about these scenes when people

16:33

are coming into these spaces? I've just

16:35

been doing a lot of work on

16:37

the Cochleaune Ghost case of the 1760s

16:39

and thinking about again young girls in

16:42

particular hitting puberty and that

16:45

experience of poltergeist and of hauntings.

16:47

And this seems like a very similar thing

16:49

and in both instances people,

16:52

adults, certainly in the

16:54

case of the Cochleaune Ghost it's mostly men, are

16:56

coming into the space, the bedroom of this young

16:58

girl, to see her do some

17:00

kind of performance and to have access

17:02

to her experiences and her body to

17:04

a certain extent. Is that a similar

17:07

thing happening here? Do you see any

17:09

sort of theatrical choreographed crossover? There

17:11

is certainly, even at the point

17:13

of access, this is a choreographed event

17:15

or phenomenon, yes. Mostly because someone like

17:17

Lazzieri would have been instructed to do

17:19

so by her spiritual director who stood

17:21

at the door and basically decided when

17:23

people could go in and he was

17:26

the one who would pull back the sheets. So

17:28

there is that choreography. It's also, it goes as

17:30

far as making sure that the lighting

17:32

is right or not too bright

17:34

rather so that the curtains would

17:37

be shut, the window would always be closed so

17:39

that you know it's a multi-sensory experience as well.

17:41

There's a build-up of expectations to the point that

17:43

when you go through the door you

17:46

kind of know what to expect but it's still

17:48

supposed to overwhelm you in all possible ways. Not

17:51

that long after there is a case in

17:53

Ireland in a Magdalene asylum, for example, where

17:55

the director of the asylum instructs people to

17:58

queue for ages in the corridor. while

18:00

you can hear the suffering going on in the room.

18:03

So he's deliberately building up those

18:05

types of expectations. If you are that

18:08

overwhelmed, you're also more likely to experience

18:10

religion in the appropriately

18:12

intense manner. Yeah,

18:15

and it's very easy, I think, isn't it,

18:17

for us to think about these things in

18:19

contexts that are, you know,

18:21

12th century, 19th century, but

18:24

even moving into the 20th century, we have

18:26

an example of some of these events, stigmata

18:28

events, and our next narrative will give us

18:31

a little bit of an insight into that.

18:37

The stigmata married together the devout

18:39

and the sensational. Nowhere

18:41

is that clearer than in the life

18:43

of the most famous receiver of stigmata

18:45

of all, Padre Pio. On

18:47

September 20th, 1918, only two months from

18:49

the end of World War I, a

18:52

young priest called Francesco Forgione, otherwise known

18:54

as Padre Pio, was at a church

18:57

in the Italian village of San Giovanni

18:59

Rotondo. In the middle

19:01

of prayer, he was overtaken by a powerful

19:03

trembling. Then came a feeling

19:06

of great calm, and he saw

19:08

a vision of Christ on the cross. The

19:10

vision disappeared, and when Padre Pio returned

19:12

to his senses, he saw wounds on

19:14

his hands and feet from which fresh

19:16

blood was flowing. Fast

19:21

forward to 1943, and

19:23

the world is at war once more. An

19:25

American bomber is flying over Italy, beginning

19:27

its bombing run. They're

19:29

not far from the village of San

19:31

Giovanni Rotondo, home of the world's most

19:34

famous stigmata bearer. Suddenly,

19:36

through the clouds, the crew see

19:38

a friar flying in the sky,

19:40

his robes flapping wildly in the

19:42

wind. He's

19:44

extending wounded hands towards them, trying to

19:47

signal them to turn back, not to

19:49

drop their bombs. Confronted

19:51

with this sight, they turn their aircraft

19:53

around and abort the mission. When

19:58

they get back, they learn the flying... Flying friar

20:00

with the wounds of Christ is none other than

20:03

Padre Pio, a priest whose

20:05

life had become a succession of miracles,

20:07

each more sensational than the last. Hey

20:34

folks, since you're a fan of history you clearly

20:36

want to understand how we've ended up with the

20:38

world that we have. Well I'd like to tell

20:40

you about my show, it's called Dan Snow's History

20:42

here, and on that show you get a daily

20:44

dose of history and the stories that really explain

20:46

just about everything that's ever happened. If you

20:49

want to know the origin stories of the cities we

20:51

inhabit, what's in our kitchen cupboards,

20:53

why you've always been drawn to dictators, the deep

20:55

history that explains what's going on for example in

20:58

the Middle East, well we've got you covered. And

21:00

if you'd rather be regaled with dramatic tales

21:02

of powerful empires, we do that too. Get

21:04

a little bit smarter every day with Dan

21:06

Snow's History here, wherever you get your podcasts.

21:09

The new Boost Mobile Network is offering unlimited

21:11

talk, text and data for just $25 a

21:13

month for life. That

21:15

sounds like a threat. Then how do you

21:17

think we should say it? Unlimited talk, text

21:20

and data for just $25 a month for

21:22

the rest of your life? I don't know.

21:24

Until your ultimate demise. What if

21:26

we just say forever? Okay. $25 a

21:28

month, forever. Get unlimited talk, text and

21:30

data for just $25 a month with

21:32

Boost Mobile forever. After 30 gigabytes, customers

21:34

may experience slower speeds. Customers will pay

21:36

$25 a month as long as they remain

21:38

active on the Boost Unlimited plan. Ryan Reynolds

21:40

here, from Mint Mobile. With the price of

21:43

just about everything going up during inflation, we

21:45

thought we'd bring our prices down. So to

21:47

help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer,

21:49

which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile, unlimited

21:51

premium wireless. How did it get 30, 30?

21:54

30, how did it get 30? How did it get 30? 20, 20. 20,

21:56

maybe get 15, 15, 20, how did it get 20? 20, 20, how did it get 20? 15,

21:58

15, just 15 bucks a month. 15, 15, 15, just $15 a

22:00

month, so... Give it a try at

22:03

mintmobile.com/Switch. $45 dollars upfront for 3

22:05

months plus taxism fees. Promote rate for new customers for limited

22:07

time unlimited, more than 40 GB per month slows. Full terms

22:09

at mintmobile.com. Hey, it's Paige from

22:11

Giggly Squad. Everybody knows about Daphne. They know

22:13

I just got a cat. I would literally

22:16

die for her. I was so nervous

22:18

about the litter box portion of getting

22:20

a cat. And honestly, I think it

22:22

was like the number one thing that

22:24

was keeping me from being a cat

22:27

owner. Litter Robot by Whisker

22:29

is the solution to all of your

22:31

litter box problems. It's self-cleaning

22:33

technology automatically cleans after every use. So

22:36

your cat will always have a fresh

22:38

bed of litter and your friends won't

22:40

think that your house smells like a

22:42

litter box. I feel

22:44

like Daphne is unique

22:47

in so many ways, but I actually feel like Daphne

22:49

is more of a clean freak than other

22:52

cats. I don't know why I feel like

22:54

that, but I feel like she gets especially

22:56

happy when I clean up her area. So

22:58

the fact that her litter is always rotating,

23:01

I know that when she's in there, she

23:03

feels clean and that means a lot to

23:06

me. There are over 1 million happy pets

23:08

and pet parents who have upgraded to Litter

23:10

Robot. So what are you waiting for? Right

23:12

now, Whisker is offering $75 off Litter Robot

23:14

bundles and

23:17

as a special offer to gigglers, you can get

23:19

an additional $50 when you go to

23:22

stopscooping.com/Acast. That's an

23:25

additional $50 off

23:27

when you go

23:30

to stopscooping.com/Acast. stopscooping.com/Acast.

23:37

I'm absolutely obsessed with this story. It's incredible. There

23:39

are so many elements here that I want to

23:41

get into, but Christophe, first of all, please tell

23:43

us, who is Padre Pio? Well,

23:47

Padre Pio was a capital company and he was a

23:49

capital company. He was a capital company. Who

23:52

is Padre Pio? Well, Padre Pio was

23:54

a Capuchin friar who became stigmatized

23:56

in 1918 and very quickly. became

24:00

a public sensation because not only did

24:02

he have the stigmata but he also

24:06

had clairvoyancy, he could

24:08

fly, he could bilocate, he had the whole package

24:10

I could use you could say. And

24:12

significantly again if we talk about

24:14

gender it's interesting that 95% of all cases

24:16

in this period are

24:19

women and the one that stands out

24:21

is Padraig Bier who very, also if

24:23

you listen to the story of his

24:25

stigmatization, very consciously I would say invokes

24:27

the same miracle story of St Francis

24:29

and if you look at pictures of

24:31

Padraig Bier holding a lamb it's not

24:33

that hard to think that's actually Francis

24:35

of Assisi, the big animal lover. So

24:38

he becomes a popular sensation and he immediately

24:40

becomes extremely suspect in the eyes of the

24:42

church because the Vatican, throughout the centuries the

24:44

Vatican has never really been that keen on

24:46

stigmata. It doesn't count as a

24:49

miracle, it is a bit problematic

24:51

because bodies are dangerous things, they

24:53

are difficult to control as well and Padraig Bier's

24:55

body is out of control in many

24:57

ways if the rumors can be believed. But

25:00

also they have the problem that he's basically treated

25:03

as a saint already by the community,

25:05

by Italy and increasingly globally and

25:08

the church in the end can't do that much

25:10

about it. They forbid him to say mass for

25:12

a while I think but he's too much of

25:15

a sensation and it's a very good, it's

25:18

probably the most powerful story of a

25:20

stigmatic escaping the control of the church

25:22

that they're a part of through the

25:25

supernatural bodies. One thing that I want

25:27

to highlight here I suppose

25:29

just to bring it back to the

25:31

idea that we deal with

25:33

a lot of myths, misdeeds and the paranormalism

25:36

is in the subtitle of our podcast but

25:38

we are essentially a history podcast and I'm

25:40

just very aware as somebody who has grown

25:43

up in a very

25:45

Catholic society and was surrounded

25:47

by images of Padre Pio

25:49

and we had numerous relics of

25:54

fragments of his gloves in the house,

25:57

the tiny little piece of white material

25:59

that worked. supposedly part

26:01

of Pio's gloves. A

26:03

lot of this, it's just

26:05

worth bearing in mind, doesn't live

26:08

up to historical scrutiny. Not that these people

26:10

weren't exhibiting signs of the stigmata, of course

26:12

they were, but the

26:14

causation is, we're

26:16

talking about it here in very religious terms

26:18

and in very Christian terms as we've said,

26:20

but of course there is an awful

26:23

lot of other things going into this beyond

26:25

religion and we've talked about money, we've talked

26:27

about power, we've talked about influence, we've talked

26:29

about bodies, we've talked about sex. All

26:32

of this is influencing

26:34

what we are experiencing, but as

26:36

a child all you

26:39

see is a bleeding man holding a

26:41

lamb, as you say, and these are

26:43

very evocative, very dramatic images

26:45

and they're something that stick with you, but now

26:47

as an adult there's also something very unsettling about

26:50

them. I don't know what you found in your

26:52

research Christoph, but is this something that people tend

26:54

to talk about or is

26:56

it very much just devotional and they

26:59

just believe everything quite blindly? No, I

27:01

think blind belief has never really been

27:03

there in historical sources. The fact that

27:05

it is such an embodied phenomenon and

27:08

that it's something that, you know, I

27:11

think of the Caravaggio painting of doubting Thomas

27:13

being invited to poke his finger into Christ's

27:15

side wound, that kind of stuff, that's what

27:17

I'm seeing in sources. People want to see

27:19

it up close because they want to make

27:21

sure that it's actually real

27:23

and even, I mean, there are doctors

27:25

going into these bedrooms to make

27:29

sure that, you know, what they're seeing

27:31

is actually supernatural or not, who knows?

27:34

But the pathology of the whole thing

27:36

has throughout history been as important to

27:39

the history of stigmata as the

27:41

religious aspect of it. Even with Saint Francis,

27:43

after he dies, his body is examined and

27:46

turns out where are these stigmata

27:48

really? And it becomes,

27:50

especially in the 19th and the

27:53

20th century, as new medical disciplines

27:55

appear, especially psychiatry and psychology, all

27:58

these disciplines they turn to stigmata and stigmatized

28:00

bodies because they want to figure out what's

28:03

really going on, what is the what lies

28:05

at the course of it. And there is

28:07

no real medical consensus well into the 20th

28:09

century. What you do

28:11

get is that people like like

28:14

the physicians of the La Salpédrier

28:16

in Paris use

28:18

this hysteria diagnosis to try

28:20

and explain what goes on, but then

28:22

are confronted with things that don't match

28:24

the diagnosis. Dermatologists also get involved, try

28:27

to figure out with skin analyses

28:29

what is exactly going on and which

28:31

layer of skin this is actually happening.

28:34

Padre Pio had x-rays taken for example.

28:36

So science is extremely interested

28:39

in this until about the mid-20th century

28:41

and then they lose

28:43

interest also because they're starting to feel

28:45

like they might make themselves or they

28:48

might undermine their own credibility if they

28:50

sustain their interest in the paranormal. And

28:53

by then you know, science has

28:55

appeared that do want to keep

28:57

going. So everything so far has

28:59

been focused on the

29:01

Catholic faith but let's move

29:03

on now to talk about

29:05

an individual called Dorothy Karen.

29:08

She is not a Catholic but she

29:10

is associated with stigmata isn't she? The

29:13

really interesting thing once you start looking

29:15

at stigmata outside countries that are predominantly

29:17

Catholic is that the phenomenon is there

29:19

as well just not where you expect

29:21

it. When I

29:24

started looking at the history of stigmata

29:26

in Britain you find them across denominations

29:28

you find them everywhere. I've found Methodists,

29:30

I found obscure cults, leaders

29:33

with stigmata. I've also found Dorothy

29:35

Karen who is contemporary

29:37

of Padre Pio actually who also developed

29:39

the stigmata. She was an Anglican who

29:41

during the first world war felt very

29:43

ill was considered to

29:45

be incurable and was then

29:48

a healed through intervention of an

29:50

angel. And she wrote

29:52

down her memoir of that and

29:54

after that she was visited by Christ

29:56

who gave her the stigmata. She

29:59

called it an embarrassing thing to be blessed

30:01

with and decided not to talk about it

30:03

too much. So she wore gloves for a

30:05

while and then also kind of made it

30:07

irrelevant to the rest of her mystical career.

30:10

So even though she became a global

30:12

phenomenon, by the way, she was a faith healer

30:14

who traveled the world till her death in 1963.

30:17

And she drew thousands and thousands of

30:19

people did faith healing with her

30:22

stigmatized hands. But the

30:24

stigmata were never really at the center of the conversation.

30:26

So they were just never brought up. And it's a

30:28

case in a way, it's a counter

30:30

example of women taking control over their own

30:32

narrative and over their own body, because she

30:35

seems to manage to do so. To write

30:38

some initial hiccups where she was staying in the

30:40

house of a spiritual director who did pull back

30:42

the sheets, so to say, and invited a lot

30:45

of people over to come have a look. But

30:47

very quickly, she becomes too much of a sensation

30:49

to be in that house. And from then on,

30:51

it's, she's got control. And

30:54

the stigmata are just irrelevant, but they

30:56

are there till her death. Fascinated by

30:59

this idea of the supernatural. I think

31:01

coming into this conversation, I would associate,

31:03

I would have associated stigmata with religious

31:06

experiences only. And I'm interested in

31:09

your framing of them as something

31:11

more broadly supernatural. And just

31:13

thinking about Dorothy Karen, one thing that I know

31:15

about her is that in the First World War,

31:17

am I right in thinking that she actually

31:21

is able to transport herself supposedly?

31:23

She appears, is it

31:25

in no man's land, I think,

31:27

during, during trans warfare? Is

31:30

that, we've got Padre

31:32

Pio flying, we've got Dorothy

31:35

Karen moving through

31:37

time and space. Is

31:39

that something that we see across

31:41

cases associated with religion and cases

31:44

that are not necessarily Catholic in

31:46

their bent? And is

31:48

that broadly supernatural?

31:50

Or is it something specific to the

31:53

stigmata idea? I

31:56

think it's not even specific to stigmata as an

31:58

idea, but very specific to stigmata as an idea.

32:00

an idea in that period. Because

32:02

the way Dorothy Karen speaks about her

32:05

stigmata is very literally the way mediums

32:07

describe being in touch with other

32:09

planes of existence. So

32:11

it's almost no surprise that she bilocates

32:13

to no man's land alongside other

32:16

stigmatics. But I don't think Padre Pio went there,

32:18

but some other stigmatics actually

32:20

went spiritually or physically depends on who

32:22

you read to different places in different

32:25

times. And I think

32:27

I'm an advocate of approaching a phenomenon

32:29

like stigmata from a supernatural point of

32:31

view, precisely because otherwise you're telling a

32:33

story of a lot of very colorful

32:35

anecdotes that may seem very outlandish

32:37

and difficult to explain. But I think Dorothy

32:39

Karen is someone you can contextualize

32:42

in this period when mediums

32:44

were very active, also

32:46

in central London where Karen was

32:48

based and were trying to establish

32:51

a communication line with the frontline in

32:54

the war. You see it again

32:56

in the Second World War where mystics

32:59

appear at every frontline.

33:02

It's also it means that you can

33:04

look at the way occult scientists or

33:06

occult practitioners or magnetists and

33:08

spiritualists were interested in phenomena that

33:10

we would think of as only

33:13

really meaningful for Catholics. Madame Blavatsky

33:15

from the Theosophical Society was very

33:18

interested in stigmata. Aleister

33:20

Crowley chased a frog

33:23

that he called Jesus through

33:25

the woods of New Hampshire and crucified

33:27

and stigmatized the animal before eating it.

33:30

So that's about the whole story, I think.

33:32

But anyway, you know, those

33:36

are illustrations of how meaningful stigmata are

33:38

outside Catholic devotional culture,

33:40

but also to the universality of something

33:43

like a crucified Christ. Let's

33:45

bring this right up to the brink

33:48

of the 21st century then, and we end

33:50

in our own time. Father

33:53

Sudatz is a priest on the

33:55

Croatian island of Loshin, with long

33:57

dark hair swept back behind his

33:59

ears. who looks, let's face it,

34:01

a little bit like the image they have

34:03

invented for Jesus. There's a

34:05

video of him preaching on YouTube. His

34:07

face is intense as he sweeps the

34:10

crowd with deep furrows on his forehead.

34:13

It was on that forehead, in fact, in

34:16

1999, when he was in his late twenties,

34:18

that a wound in the shape of the

34:20

crucifix appeared. A year

34:22

later, on the feast day of St.

34:24

Francis of Assisi, no less, the wounds

34:27

of Christ appeared in Sudath's wrists, feet,

34:29

and sides. In the

34:31

video, blood-stained bandages cover his wrists as he

34:33

urges his audience to realize that they are

34:35

not living in the Internet Age, but in

34:38

the Age of the Holy Spirit. That

34:40

miracles of healing and knowledge are still being

34:43

given to the world, but that everyone is

34:45

too distracted to see them. From

34:47

St. Francis of Assisi through

34:49

Maria Lazari in 19th century

34:51

Italy, from Dorothy Cairne to

34:53

Padre Pio and Father Sudath

34:55

on the Croatian island, the

34:58

supposed wounds of Christ continue to

35:00

wander through history. Will

35:02

they ever stop appearing on the limbs of

35:04

believers? And what would it mean if

35:06

they did? I

35:10

think it's unsurprising, given

35:13

the longevity of the stigmata

35:15

tradition that you've spoken about, Christophe,

35:17

that these ideas, this

35:19

reality, however you want to take

35:22

it, is still continuing today

35:24

and that people are still talking about

35:26

stigmata. What do you think

35:28

it means for our modern world today

35:30

that people are still supposedly experiencing this? I

35:33

think in the end, it doesn't mean that much different from

35:36

what people were saying in the 19th century.

35:38

Back then, people were also saying, look at

35:40

how we've industrialized and how we've entered the

35:42

Age of the Machine, but look, there's also

35:45

that happening there in that village in the

35:47

Alps. In

35:49

a way, they became mobilized then

35:51

as symbols of something purer, as

35:53

something transcendental, as evidence of the

35:55

power of something transcendental,

35:58

just as they were then. just as Saint

36:00

Francis has been since the 13th century as

36:02

well. But there's always been the

36:05

idea that once you experience the stigmata

36:07

on someone's body, that body then becomes

36:09

a useful instrument in

36:11

all kinds of rhetoric,

36:13

you could say. And that's not changed. The rhetoric

36:16

is actually very similar to what it was in

36:18

the 19th century or in the, let's say 17th

36:20

century. But what has changed,

36:22

and I disagree with our Croatian stigmatic there,

36:24

is that we are entering the age of,

36:26

that the age of the internet has very

36:28

much changed the way phenomena like these spread

36:30

and are perceived. You could

36:33

say that we've entered a more diffuse sense

36:35

of Christianity, I guess, and that people like

36:37

him have to brand themselves in a more

36:39

explicit way to be able to be perceived

36:42

as a mystic of their own time. But

36:44

that's also, you know, the means have changed

36:46

and the technologies have changed and the ways

36:49

you brand yourself have changed. But

36:51

in a way, Lazzeri was also doing that with

36:53

the means available to her. Also,

36:55

more like Dorothy Karen and Pedro Pio, definitely. I

36:58

want to finish then, Christophe, on one

37:01

final question. I'd love to get your insight into

37:03

this and see how

37:05

this unravels in the work that you've been

37:07

doing with your research. Rather than talk about

37:10

belief and religion and

37:12

symbols and Christ and all

37:14

of this, I'd like

37:17

to talk about lies and fakery and

37:19

forgery and

37:21

deliberately misleading, often vulnerable

37:23

people. Yeah,

37:25

something that's quite

37:28

deliberately manufactured by man

37:30

to fool people. How

37:33

does this element of stigmata,

37:35

how does that present itself in the

37:37

archive? As far as I try to

37:39

dismiss the question of truth or authenticity

37:42

of supernatural phenomena when I come across them,

37:44

because it's a rabbit hole you can't get

37:46

out of anymore. There are sources

37:49

that make it very plain that fraud or

37:51

fakery has happened. I mean, and sometimes it's

37:53

almost too convenient or too obvious to the

37:56

point where you think that it's a counter

37:58

narrative that's being created in the... sources

38:01

to dismiss the phenomenon in general. I'm

38:03

thinking of a British Jesuit in training

38:06

in Malta, I think, who suddenly had the

38:08

stigmata and they turned out to find the

38:10

bucket of chicken blood just behind the door.

38:13

The stories are represented in such a way

38:15

as to say, look at what Catholicism does,

38:17

tries to deceive you, I guess. But there

38:19

are many cases where it's not so obvious.

38:21

And you know, when we talk

38:24

of young women who are being very

38:26

often put in a position where they

38:28

are subject to someone

38:30

who doesn't only have spiritual authority, but

38:32

also social authority and

38:34

is just a person of considerable

38:36

status, whereas she is very often

38:38

almost a nobody. Someone who has

38:40

had very little education, someone who has

38:42

very poor health very often, is

38:45

completely in the hands of the priest

38:47

because he's stepped in to take on

38:49

that role. And there are

38:51

cases available, there are cases as well where

38:53

it's very obvious that the priest is inflicting

38:56

the wounds on the woman, also to strengthen

38:58

his own reputation, I guess, as someone who's

39:00

in touch with God or to make money

39:02

out of it. But to generalize this or

39:04

to say something about the phenomenon as a

39:06

whole, I really can't because I've also seen

39:09

cases, also contemporary cases where I just have

39:11

no idea what's going on. A bit like

39:13

what you describe it down the road. Oh,

39:16

I think I do know what

39:18

was going on down the road. I saw what I saw,

39:20

but I think I do know

39:22

what was going on down the road. Okay, well, I have to think of a

39:24

different example. Christophe,

39:26

thank you so very much for coming on

39:28

this journey with us today. It's been truly

39:32

fascinating and I think it's left us with

39:34

a lot of food for thought. We've got

39:36

a lot to digest there

39:38

and I love where this conversation

39:40

has gone in terms of these

39:43

ambiguous areas and this question of

39:45

belief and evidence and faith. It's

39:48

something that we do come up against continually

39:51

on this podcast and I think this is

39:53

the perfect topic for exploring that. So thank

39:55

you very much. If people want

39:57

to find more of your work or to hear about

39:59

what you're you're doing next, where can they do that?

40:02

That's a very good question. I am still

40:04

on Twitter. Yeah, it's a bit

40:06

like a ghost, like a no man's land there

40:08

now. Yeah, that's probably the right place. My book

40:11

comes out soon, so I expect to be present

40:14

in some capacity over the next

40:16

couple of months in different places. I

40:18

honestly can't wait. It's gonna be, that is right

40:20

up my street. I'm gonna absolutely devour that. I

40:22

feel like I need an epilogue about a certain

40:25

case now. Fantastic, well thank

40:27

you very much, and thank you for listening to After

40:29

Dark. If you want to

40:31

explore our back catalogue, if you've been listening,

40:33

please leave us a five star review. Leave

40:35

it wherever you get your podcasts. It really, really

40:37

helps other people to find the show. It

40:39

helps to grow it, and it's just really

40:41

nice to hear that we're doing a good

40:43

job and that you are enjoying yourselves. So until

40:46

then, we will speak to you soon. To

40:53

make switching to the new Boost Mobile Risk

40:56

Free, we're offering a 30 day money back

40:58

guarantee. So why wouldn't you switch from Verizon

41:00

or T-Mobile? Because you have nothing to lose.

41:02

Boost Mobile is offering a 30 day money

41:04

back guarantee. No, I asked why wouldn't you

41:06

switch from Verizon or T-Mobile? Oh. Wouldn't. Because

41:09

you love wasting money as a way

41:11

to punish yourself because your mother never

41:14

showed you enough love as a child.

41:16

Whoa, easy there. Yeah. Applies to online

41:18

activations, requires port in and auto pay.

41:20

Customers activating in stores may be charged

41:22

non-refundable activation fees. We all

41:24

have dreams. Dream home renovations. Dream

41:28

vacations. Or

41:31

sending our kids to their dream colleges. But

41:34

finding straightforward ways to turn those dreams into

41:36

realistic goals, that's where things get

41:38

tricky. Merrill understands that. That's

41:40

why with a dedicated Merrill advisor,

41:43

you get a personalized plan and

41:45

a clear path forward. And

41:47

having the bull at your back helps your whole financial life

41:49

move with you. So when your

41:52

plans change, Merrill is with you every

41:54

step of the way. Go to ml.com/bullish

41:56

to learn more. Merrill, a Bank of

41:58

America company. What would you like the

42:01

power to do? Investing involves risk. Merrill

42:03

Lynch, Pierce Fenner & Smith, Inc., registered

42:05

broker dealer, registered investment advisor, member SIPC.