When St Francis subsequently rose, calling for help, from the ground in
front of the angel the stigmata had appeared. Thomas
Celano described the appearance of the wounds in biography of St Francis written in 1226:
"His hands and feet seemed pierced in the midst by nails, the head of
nails appearing in the inner part of the hands and in the inner part of the feet...
Moreover his right side, as if it had been pierced by a lance, was overlaid with a scar,
and often shed forth blood so that his tunic and drawers were sprinkled with sacred
blood."
The subsequent wounds also caused St Francis difficulty in walking. When
he died mourners passed the body so that they could see inside the wounds.
In 1894 Dr Imbert-Gourbeye compiled the first expansive list of
stigmatics. He covered 321 cases, 41 of these were men and of these 41 one was fully
stigmatic. The others showed signs of affliction but they did carry all the marks. Others
did not bleed regularly so could not be authenticated.
Stigmatics continued to survive well into the 20th Century, one of the
famous examples of this is the case of Padre Pio.
