asked by her spiritual superiors whence her wounds proceeded, the
utmost she said was: 'I hope that they come from the hand of God.'

The limits of this work preclude us from entering upon the subject
of stigmas in general, but we may observe that the Catholic Church has
produced a certain number of persons, St. Francis of Assisi being the
first, who have attained to that degree of contemplative love of Jesus
which is the most sublime effect of union with his sufferings, and is
designated by theologians, Vulnus divinum, Plago amoris viva. There are
known to have been at least fifty. Veronica Giuliani, a Capuchiness,
who died at Citta di Castello in 1727, is the last individual of the
class who has been canonised (on the 26th May 1831). Her biography,
published at Cologne in 1810, gives a description of the state of
persons with stigmas, which in many ways is applicable to Anne
Catherine. Colomba Schanolt, who died at Bamberg in 1787, Magdalen
Lorger, who died at Hadamar in 1806, both Dominicanesses, and Rose
Serra, a Capuchiness at Ozieri in Sardinia, who received the stigmas in
1801, are those of our own times of whom we know the most. Josephine
Kumi, of the Convent of Wesen, near Lake Wallenstadt in Switzerland,
who was still living in 1815, also belonged to this class of persons,
but we are not entirely certain whether she had the stigmas. 3

Anne Catherine being, as we have said, no longer able to walk or
rise from her bed, soon became unable also to eat. Before long she
could take nothing but a little wine and water, and finally only pure
water; sometimes, but very rarely, she managed to swallow the juice of
a cherry or a plum, but she immediately vomited any solid food, taken
in ever so small a quantity. This inability to take food, or rather
this faculty of living for a great length of time upon nothing but
water, we are assured by learned doctors is not quite unexampled in the