Note 43 — CHAP. VII.

Instances of revelations, like those of St. Bridget, concerning the person of Jesus Christ and his sufferings, are very frequent among Nuns; and, to say the truth, it is nowise surprising that they should, at times, have visions of this kind. As those Women who are destined to live in the condition of Nuns, are commonly, not to say always, made to take their vows at an early age, that is, at a time when their passions are most disposed to be inflamed, and when an object of love may be looked upon as one of the necessaries of life, this, together with the circumstance of their close confinement, induces a number of them to contract a real and ardent love for the person of Jesus Christ, whose pictures they see placed almost in every corner, who is, besides, expressly called their Husband, whose Spouses they are said to be, and to whom, at the final and solemn closing of their vows, they have been actually betrothed, by having a ring put on their finger. To the mind of such of those unfortunate young Women as have once begun to indulge fancies of this kind, the image of their beloved Spouse is continually present, under some one of the figures by which he is represented in the above-mentioned pictures; and his flagellations, and other hardships he was made to undergo, are, among other things, the objects of their tenderest concern: hence the numberless visions and revelations which Nuns, like St. Bridget, have at all times had upon those subjects: and several among them, whose love was more fervent, or who thought themselves intitled to some particular distinction from their Spouse, have even fancied, on certain occasions, that they had been favoured with a visible impression of his sacred Stigmats, that is, of the marks of the five main wounds which he received when he was put to death. The idea of those visible marks or Stigmats of Jesus Christ’s wounds, we may observe, was, in the first instance, a contrivance of St. Francis, who pretended that they had been impressed on his body during a vision he had in a remote place; and he prevailed upon his Monks, and other adherents, to consider them as emblems of a close affinity between him and our Lord, and as a kind of order of knighthood that had been conferred on him.