e. It happened that her
landlady's little daughter came into her room, saw her hands bleeding,
and ran to tell her mother, who with great anxiety asked Anne Catherine
what had happened, but was begged by her not to speak about it. She
felt, after having received the stigmas, that an entire change had
taken place in her body; for the course of her blood seemed to have
changed, and to flow rapidly towards the stigmas. She herself used to
say: 'No words can describe in what manner it flows.'

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, g