“The vision disappearing, his soul was filled with heavenly light, while a marvellous sign was left imprinted on his limbs. On his hand and feet were the marks of the nails, as he had beheld in the seraphic vision, and on his right side was a wound, as if made by a lance’s thrust. His hands and feet appeared transfixed with the nails, their heads being seen in the upper part of the feet, and the points on the reverse sides. The heads of these nails were round and black, and the points somewhat long and bent, as if turned back; so that between them and the skin there was the space of a finger. They could be moved with ease; for on the one side they were embedded in the flesh, whilst on the other they were clear of it: yet it was not possible to draw them out, as we are assured by S. Clare, who, after the saint’s death, essayed to do so, but could not succeed. The wound in the side was deep, and of the width of three fingers. It was red, and the saint’s habit was often stained by the blood which flowed from it.” These stigmata were seen during his life by the reigning Pope Alexander with many of his cardinals; and after his death, by more than fifty brethren together, by S. Clare and many of her sisters, and an innumerable crowd of seculars, who came from all parts of the country to be witnesses of these wonders. At the close of the seventeenth century, another case of stigmatization occurred to Veronica Juliana, a nun; and her examination by the bishop of her diocese, aided by several physicians, was of so strict and severe a character, that deception on her part would have been quite impossible. In the early part of the same century, Joanna di Jesu Maria, a Spanish nun, was subjected to even a more rigorous examination, before a court composed of the Commissary of the Inquisition, the Suffragan Bishop, several of the secular and regular clergy of the district, of many learned men, and two distinguished physicians. In this case, the subject of the phenomena bore not only the wounds on her hands, feet, and side, from which blood and water frequently flowed, but also around her head, as from the crown of thorns, a deep wound, which, in the opinion of the doctors, penetrated to the skull. They, furthermore, declared by oath that the wounds were not natural, and could not possibly be the effect of fraud. The most celebrated subjects of stigmata in our own days are Maria Mörl, the Ecstatica of Caldamo, in the Tyrol, and Maria Domenica Lazzari, a peasant girl of Capriana, whose cases were brought before the English public by that late distinguished nobleman John, Earl of Shrewsbury, A. L. M. P. De Lisle, Esq.,[55] the Rev. T. W. Allies, and others.