Stigmata and the Location of Christ's Wounds
I was googling "stigmatics" just now (don't ask) and I came across this site on the location of Christ's wounds. Were they through the palms, or through the wrists?
It was a meaningful question for my search, since virtually all stigmatics have wounds in their palms, rather than in their wrists. And yet, we're told, modern medical science has shown that it's impossible to crucify a person by his hands, because the body's too heavy and the nail would simply rip through the flesh. I mean: a French doctor proved it in the early 20th Century using an amputated arm!
This subject is fresh in my mind because a couple nights back I was hanging out with a bunch of divinity students, having some drinks, and the topic of our conversation turned to stigmatics and stigmata. (It did so because my roommate brought up his stigma, an old puncture wound in his hand, self-inflicted while trying to prepare an avocado.) The group was mostly atheist/agnostic, with one Protestant and one Catholic of a decidedly liberal-secularist bent (plus me), so collective understanding from the word-go was that stigmatics were fakes and frauds, good only for mocking or perhaps puzzling over as an example of the queerness of Catholicism. The other Catholic declared that Padre Pio had "masochistic tendencies" (probably true in some sense, though I don't necessarily see the relevance) and then announced that he'd be willing to make himself a stigmatic if you gave him the right tools (he then pantomimed chiseling into his own palm). The Protestant then pointed out that the wounds were not historically located, but rather followed the artistic conventions of the day, the implication being again that they were self-inflicted or, at best, psychosomatic. She added with mock charity that perhaps God just puts the wounds where people are expecting them.
Now, leave aside that that final point actually makes total sense to me. (If you believe, as I do, that they're real) stigmata aren't intended as a history lesson; they're a mark of piety, of solidarity with Christ's suffering. If putting the wounds in an unanticipated place would compromise the larger goal, why wouldn't God put them where you expected them to be? It's the same with apparitions of Christ or the Virgin Mary - they appear as people expect them to look, not as First Century Palestinians, because the latter would distract from the purpose of the apparition.
But I've digressed. The point is that there's apparently now a forensic scientist who's suggesting that the calculations underlying the "you can't do it through the hand" hypothesis were wrong, and that it would in fact be possible to crucify someone by the hands. Apparently the amputated arm that was used was weakened because it had already begun to decompose. There was also a miscalculation regarding how much force would be pulling down on each arm.
This is not to say that Christ was definitely crucified by his hands. It's merely to suggest that we shouldn't be so dismissive of the idea that he might have been, and that we shouldn't dismiss secondary phenomena - palm-stigmatics, 2000 years of Christian art - because they don't accord with what we think modern science tells us.
The whole business strikes me as a classic modern story. We get some "expert" - a scientist, a philosopher, an ethicist, a historian - who tells us that X, which we've always believed, can't be true, and that he'd got experiments/insight/research to prove it. Then, largely without learning enough to understand the empirical basis for rejecting X, we accept the refutation and come to believe not-X. And we sneer at our foolish, parochial ancestors, benighted with ignorance, who actually believed X. Then the basis for rejecting X turns out to be shoddy, or irrelevant, or downright faked, but it's too late: the cultural consensus has shifted to not-X. And people aren't willing to go back, not only because they'd have to change their beliefs but because they'd have to give up something far more precious: their feeling of smug superiority over their ancestors. They'd have to admit that maybe they really don't know much more than the illiterate goat-herders who spawned their line. And so we reject 2000 years of Christian art, much of it produced by people with a great deal more familiarity with the actual practice of crucifixion than you or I, because some French doctor working with a severed arm says he knows better.
As for myself, I do believe in the validity of at least some of the stigmatics (certainly Padre Pio, whose stigmata were among the least weird of his charisms). I believe in all the rest of that freaked-out POD stuff - bilocation, levitation, the power of relics, healing shrines, Marian apparitions - the whole lot of it. (Well, not the whole lot. Some individual examples are clearly bogus. But I believe in the existence of each category, and of real world examples there of.) It's one of the real graces God has given me - no matter how much I've struggled with various aspects of doctrine or practice in my life, I've always been incredibly credulous when it comes to the super-freaky miraculous. Maybe it's my romantic side, or my inner sci-fi/fantasy dweeb. Who knows? Who cares?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to dust the saints' heads.
It was a meaningful question for my search, since virtually all stigmatics have wounds in their palms, rather than in their wrists. And yet, we're told, modern medical science has shown that it's impossible to crucify a person by his hands, because the body's too heavy and the nail would simply rip through the flesh. I mean: a French doctor proved it in the early 20th Century using an amputated arm!
This subject is fresh in my mind because a couple nights back I was hanging out with a bunch of divinity students, having some drinks, and the topic of our conversation turned to stigmatics and stigmata. (It did so because my roommate brought up his stigma, an old puncture wound in his hand, self-inflicted while trying to prepare an avocado.) The group was mostly atheist/agnostic, with one Protestant and one Catholic of a decidedly liberal-secularist bent (plus me), so collective understanding from the word-go was that stigmatics were fakes and frauds, good only for mocking or perhaps puzzling over as an example of the queerness of Catholicism. The other Catholic declared that Padre Pio had "masochistic tendencies" (probably true in some sense, though I don't necessarily see the relevance) and then announced that he'd be willing to make himself a stigmatic if you gave him the right tools (he then pantomimed chiseling into his own palm). The Protestant then pointed out that the wounds were not historically located, but rather followed the artistic conventions of the day, the implication being again that they were self-inflicted or, at best, psychosomatic. She added with mock charity that perhaps God just puts the wounds where people are expecting them.
Now, leave aside that that final point actually makes total sense to me. (If you believe, as I do, that they're real) stigmata aren't intended as a history lesson; they're a mark of piety, of solidarity with Christ's suffering. If putting the wounds in an unanticipated place would compromise the larger goal, why wouldn't God put them where you expected them to be? It's the same with apparitions of Christ or the Virgin Mary - they appear as people expect them to look, not as First Century Palestinians, because the latter would distract from the purpose of the apparition.
But I've digressed. The point is that there's apparently now a forensic scientist who's suggesting that the calculations underlying the "you can't do it through the hand" hypothesis were wrong, and that it would in fact be possible to crucify someone by the hands. Apparently the amputated arm that was used was weakened because it had already begun to decompose. There was also a miscalculation regarding how much force would be pulling down on each arm.
This is not to say that Christ was definitely crucified by his hands. It's merely to suggest that we shouldn't be so dismissive of the idea that he might have been, and that we shouldn't dismiss secondary phenomena - palm-stigmatics, 2000 years of Christian art - because they don't accord with what we think modern science tells us.
The whole business strikes me as a classic modern story. We get some "expert" - a scientist, a philosopher, an ethicist, a historian - who tells us that X, which we've always believed, can't be true, and that he'd got experiments/insight/research to prove it. Then, largely without learning enough to understand the empirical basis for rejecting X, we accept the refutation and come to believe not-X. And we sneer at our foolish, parochial ancestors, benighted with ignorance, who actually believed X. Then the basis for rejecting X turns out to be shoddy, or irrelevant, or downright faked, but it's too late: the cultural consensus has shifted to not-X. And people aren't willing to go back, not only because they'd have to change their beliefs but because they'd have to give up something far more precious: their feeling of smug superiority over their ancestors. They'd have to admit that maybe they really don't know much more than the illiterate goat-herders who spawned their line. And so we reject 2000 years of Christian art, much of it produced by people with a great deal more familiarity with the actual practice of crucifixion than you or I, because some French doctor working with a severed arm says he knows better.
As for myself, I do believe in the validity of at least some of the stigmatics (certainly Padre Pio, whose stigmata were among the least weird of his charisms). I believe in all the rest of that freaked-out POD stuff - bilocation, levitation, the power of relics, healing shrines, Marian apparitions - the whole lot of it. (Well, not the whole lot. Some individual examples are clearly bogus. But I believe in the existence of each category, and of real world examples there of.) It's one of the real graces God has given me - no matter how much I've struggled with various aspects of doctrine or practice in my life, I've always been incredibly credulous when it comes to the super-freaky miraculous. Maybe it's my romantic side, or my inner sci-fi/fantasy dweeb. Who knows? Who cares?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to dust the saints' heads.
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