The earliest of all cases of stigmatization--of which nearly seventy are fully authenticated--was that of Francis of Assisi, who, after having spent years in fervent prayer for permission to share the sufferings of the Saviour, at last saw a seraph with six wings descend toward him, and between the wings the form of a crucified person. At the same moment he felt piercing pains, and when he recovered from his trance he found his hands and feet, as well as his side, bleeding as from severe wounds, and strange, dark excrescences, resembling nails, protruding from the wounds in his extremities. As this was the first case of stigmatization known, Francis of Assisi was filled with grave doubts concerning the strange phenomenon, and carefully concealed it from all but his most intimate friends. Still the wounds were seen and felt by Pope Alexander and a number of cardinals during his lifetime, and became an object of careful investigation after his death. (Philalethes' _Divina Comm., Paradiso_, p. 144.) There is but one other case, as fully authenticated, in which a man was thus stigmatized; all other trustworthy instances are related of females. How close the connection is between the will and the appearance of these phenomena may be seen from one of the best-established cases, that of Joanna of Burgos, in Spain, who had shed much blood every week for twenty years in following the recital of the passion of our Saviour. When she was seventy years old, her superiors prevailed upon her, by special arguments, to pray fervently for a suspension of her sufferings. She threw herself down before a crucifix, and remained there a day and a night in incessant prayer; on the next morning the wounds had closed, and never again commenced bleeding. Another evidence of this feature lies in the fact that stigmatization occurs mainly in Italy, the land of imagination, and in Spain, the land of devotion; in Germany only a few cases are known, and not one in the North of Europe and in America.