Stigmata: Patient Zero

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

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 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, 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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

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.

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,

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

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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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

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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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,

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 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, 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 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

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 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 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, 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 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 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

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. 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 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 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 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

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 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 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

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 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.

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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, 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.

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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.

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

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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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

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