We are indebted to a curious incident for our knowledge of the circumstances which we have here related.  On the 15th December 1819, she had a detailed vision of all that had happened to herself, but so that she thought it concerned some other nun who she imagined must be living not far off, and who she supposed had experienced the same things as herself.  She related all these details with a very strong feeling of compassion, humbling herself, without knowing it, before her own patience and sufferings.  It was most touching to hear her say:  ’I ought never to complain anymore, now that I have seen the sufferings of that poor nun; her heart is surrounded with a crown of thorns, but she bears it placidly and with a smiling countenance.  It is shameful indeed for me to complain, for she had a far heavier burden to bear than I have.’

These visions, which she afterwards recognised to be her own history, were several times repeated, and it is from them that the circumstances under which she received the stigmas became known.  Otherwise she would not have related so many particulars about what her humility never permitted her to speak of, and concerning which, when 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 history of the sick.