Note 55 — ST. PAUL’S THORN IN THE FLESH: WHAT WAS IT?

It may be worth mentioning here, that an opinion prevails in the Roman Catholic Church, that persons who have been favored with Divine visions, or to whom God wishes to give a token of his peculiar love, are frequently marked by what are specifically called stigmas. I have not met with any account of the grounds on which this opinion is founded: but the stigmas are explained to be the marks of the Saviour’s five wounds. It is very likely that the notion is nothing more than a fantastic and superstitious explanation of the passage in Galatians vi. 17. But it is not altogether impossible that it may be the faint and imperfect echo of some early tradition in the Church as to the physical effect produced upon St. Paul by Christ’s miraculous appearance to him near Damascus. Whatever be its origin, the existence of such an opinion is not without a certain degree of curiosity and interest. Return