The hour was devoted to the stigmatization of Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), history's first stigmatized man, in September 1224, on Monte La Verna. The status of the stigma is that of a "seal"(sigillo), in the words of Dante in Paradiso, XI, 106-108: "On a bitter rock between the Tiber and the Arno, // he received from Christ the last seal, which for two years his limbs bore". The origin of the expression is Bonaventure's Légende mineure, evoking "the seal of resemblance [...] to Jesus crucified, [...] imprinted in the body of his servant not by an effect of nature or art, but by the admirable power of the Spirit". Stigmatization seems to provide a positive answer to one of the philosophical problems of compassion drawn from Schlick: "Can I experience in my body the pain of another?". As a replica of Christ's suffering, it is the literal form of sympathy. Focus on other, non-literal forms of stigmatization: the traces of the lashes received by Paul for preaching the Gospel (the stigmata of Galatians 6:19); the tattoos ("point writings") proscribed by Leviticus; the "exit signs" of the graphomaniac demons confronted by Jean-Joseph Surin (1600-1665). We analyzed the account of stigmatization given by Thomas of Celano (1200-1270): the preliminary fast, the night of prayer, the vision of the seraphic Christ with six wings. We noted that the appearance of the stigmata took place at a time when Francis was "wondering with anguish" about the meaning of what he had seen. We examined two works by Giotto (1266-1337) showing the vision/stigmatization of Francis in his relationship to the Seraphic Crucified: the altarpiece in the Church of San Francesco in Pisa, now in the Louvre; and the fresco in the Capella Bardi in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence. We then turned to the question of how to explain the stigmata. Since the Middle Ages, there have been two opposing hypotheses: the strength of Francis' spirit, which "shines through his flesh"; and the action of the Christ-like seraph, beaming down on his body. The role of the imagination is supported both by nineteenth-century physicians, including Georges Dumas (1866-1946), Théodule Ribot's (1839-1916) pupil at the Collège de France, and by Petrarch (1304-1374) in a letter to Tommaso Del Garbo dated November 9, 1366. Finally, we took an archaeological interest in a pair of notions: "resemblance" and "conformity", introduced by Bonaventure to consider the status of "expressive image of the Crucified". The expression appears in a Bonaventurean formula reported by Pierre de Jean-Olivi (1248-1298): "The stigmata are the sign of Francis' total transformation and conformation to Christ and in Christ". The couple can be traced all the way back to 14th-century German mysticism. The lesson concluded with an initial set of remarks on the theological interpretation of Francis' vision: the six wings of the seraphim and the six degrees of the spirit's elevation to God according to Bonaventure'sItinerarium.
18:00 - 19:00
