led to oppose him to Francis. He suddenly
remembers the stigmata and says, "Never man on earth, but he, has had
the five wounds of Christ. His companion, Brother Leo, who was present
when they washed the body before the burial, told me that he looked
precisely like a crucified man taken down from the cross."

3. Thomas of Celano, before 1230. He describes them more at length than
Brother Elias (1 Cel., 94, 95, 112).

The details are too precise not to suggest a lesson learned by heart.
The author nowhere assumes to be an eye-witness, yet he has the tone of
a legal deposition.

These objections are not without weight, but the very novelty of the
miracle might have induced the Franciscans to fix it in a sort of
canonical and so to say, stereotyped narrative.

4. The portrait of Francis, by Berlinghieri, dated 1236,[2] preserved
at Pescia (province of Lucca) shows the stigmata as they are described
in the preceding documents.

5. Gregory IX. in 1237. Bull of March 31; _Confessor Domini_ (Potthast,
10307. Cf. 10315). A movement of opinion against the stigmata had been
produced in certain countries. The pope asks all the faithful to believe
in them. Two other bulls of the same day, one addressed to the Bishop of
Olmuetz, the other to the Dominicans, energetically condemns them for
calling the stigmata in question (Potthast, 10308 and 10309).

6. Alexander IV., in his bull _Benigna operatio_ of October 29, 1255
(Potthast, 16077), states that having formerly been the domestic
prelate of Cardinal Ugolini, he knew St. Francis familiarly, and
supports his description of the stigmata by these relations.

To this pontiff are due several bulls declaring excommunicate all those
who deny them. These contribute nothing new to the question.

7. Bonaventura (1260) repeats in his legend Thomas of Celano's
description (Bon., 193; cf. 1 Cel. 94 and 95), not without adding some
new factors (Bon., 194-200 and 215-218), often so coarse and clumsy that
they inevitably awaken doubt (see for example, 201).

8. Matthew Paris ([Cross] 1259). His discordant witness barely
deserves being cited by way of memoir (see Critical Study, p. 431). To
be able to forgive the fanciful character of his long disquisitions on
St. Francis, we are forced to recall to mind that he owed his
information to the verbal account of some pilgrim. He makes the
stigmata appear a fortnight before the Saint's death, shows them
continually emitting blood, the wound on