Yamit Rachman-Schrire

Christ’s Side-Wound and Francis’ Stigmatization

at La-Verna
Reflections on the Rock of Golgotha

The Rock of Golgotha, the traditional site of Christ’s Crucifixion, is a tall vertical column
of limestone, integrated into the altar of the Chapel of the Crucifixion in the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (fig. 1). While mostly hidden within the floor and the
walls of the Church, certain parts of the rock are accessible to a pilgrim’s touch or sight.
In the centre of the altar, the hole where the true cross is believed to have once stood is
framed by a metal disc. The pit itself is not visible, but pilgrims can reach its bottom as
they stretch their hands through the metal disc. To the right and left sides of the altar the
Rock of Golgotha projects above the floor level. Glass windows offer glimpses into the
cleft, believed to have been torn in the rock at the time of the Crucifixion, as narrated in
Matthew 27:51, “And behold the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top even to
the bottom: and the earth quaked and the rocks were rent.”1
The glass windows, which frame the clefts of the rock, are modern, and prevent pil-
grims and believers from touching the rock. However, late medieval accounts testify that
both the cleft and the hole were accessible to pilgrims who used to touch them, lie on
them, and even enter them with their hands, heads, and bodies. This chapter charts the
reception and visuality of the Rock of Golgotha in the late Middle Ages, when the ‘open-
ings’ of the rock – the cleft and the hole – became the focus of pilgrims’ devotional ven-
eration. Following art-historians and historians of visual culture, by ‘visuality’ I refer to a
culturally conditioned and constructed sight.2 Reconstructing the visuality of the rock in
the late Middle Ages allows us to understand the role of the rock in the pilgrims’ experi-
ence of the site of the crucifixion. By drawing the strings between the setting of the rock
in the crusaders’ church and emerging devotional trends in the pilgrims’ homelands, I will
show that pilgrims’ devotional focus on the clefts of the Rock of Golgotha was another

1 “Et ecce velum templi scissum est in duas partes a summo usque deorsum et terra mota est et petrae
scissae sunt.”
2 Hal Foster (ed.): Vision and Visuality, Seattle 1988. For the history of the term ‘visuality’ and further
bibliography, see: Alexa Sand: Visuality, in: Studies in Iconography 33, Special Issue Medieval Art
History Today – Critical Terms (2012), p. 89–95.

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46 Yamit Rachman-Schrire

1 Chapel of the Crucifixion with the Rock of Golgotha seen through the glass-windows on both
sides of the altar, Jerusalem, Church of the Holy Sepulchre

facet of late medieval devotion to the wounds and blood of Christ. I stress that far from
being ‘merely’ a geographical relic, the Rock of Golgotha constitutes both an object and an
agent of cultural transformations, functioning as a performative object whose meanings
were constantly reformulated in accordance with contemporary views and “ways of seeing”.

The Rock of Golgotha: the clefts as substitutes for the whole

As early as the fourth century, the Rock of Golgotha has been enclosed within the inner
court of the Constantinian complex of the Holy Sepulchre, where it stood in its full height,
naked, under the open skies. Though constituting a prominent topographical form in the
sacred geography of the city, pilgrims’ accounts barely mention the rock and its special
characteristics of colour and texture; instead, they emphasize the cross (either a replica of
the True Cross or a relic of it) which was fixed on top of it.3 In the course of the sixth and

3 For further discussion and references: Yamit Rachman-Schrire: The Rock of Golgotha in Jerusalem
and Western Imagination, in: Hans Aurenhammer and Daniela Bohde (ed.): Spaces of the Passion:
Visions of Space, Places of Remembrance and Topographies of Christ’s Suffering in the Middle
Ages and the Early Modern Period, Hamburg 2015, p. 29–48.

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 Christ’s Side-Wound and Francis’ Stigmatization at La-Verna 47

the seventh centuries, the complex of the Holy Sepulchre underwent various architectonic
alterations. The Rock of Golgotha has been gradually detached from its surroundings, and
a staircase was built beside it leading pilgrims to its top. The spatial and architectonical
transformations visited upon the rock went hand in hand with a shift in the point of view
of the devotees, who could now gaze closely at the rock, towards its surface, acquiring knowl-
edge on its specific morphological features. The Pseudo-Antoninus, whose account is
dated ca. 570, mentions the bloodstain of Christ that was visible on the rock, and the crack
shown next to the altar, into which one could throw an apple or anything else that will
float, and then pick it up in Siloam.4 Narratives that were formerly associated with the
Jewish Temple, including the burial place of Adam and Isaac’s sacrifice, were trans-located
to the Rock of Golgotha and to the compound of the Holy Sepulchre, perceived now as the
New Christian Temple of the City.5 A close reading of pilgrims’ accounts from this period
suggests that the more the rock was framed and detached from its surroundings, the more
important it became for the pilgrims’ visible and tactile experience.
This process culminated in the mid-twelfth century, when the Rock of Golgotha was
entirely enclosed within the Crusaders’ Church of the Holy Sepulchre.6 The shape of the
rock was concealed and fragmented between the upper Chapel of the Crucifixion and the
lower Chapel of Adam. In its new setting the rock was almost entirely hidden, except for
its most important parts, which were intentionally left exposed to the pilgrims’ sight and
touch: the hole where the true cross was said to have once stood, and the cleft believed to
have been torn in the rock at the time of the Crucifixion (fig. 2). A chapel underneath the
Chapel of the Crucifixion marked the site of Adam’s tomb.7 Stains of Christ’s blood were
shown to pilgrims in the hole and the clefts of the rock.8 In the course of the following
centuries, the ‘openings’ of the Rock of Golgotha became the focus of intense devotional
practices. Though we lack visual evidence of the altar of the Crucifixion at the Crusaders’
Chapel, pilgrims’ texts provide us with knowledge concerning the setting and appearance

4 Itinerarium Antonini Placentini, in: Peter Geyer et al. (ed.): Itineraria et alia geographica, CCSL
175 (1965) p. 129–153 (capital 19). English translation: John Wilkinson: Jerusalem Pilgrims before
the crusades, Jerusalem 1977, p. 79–89, here p. 83.
5 For the transfer of biblical traditions to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in general, and to the
Rock of Golgotha in particular, see: Bianca Kühnel: Jewish Symbolism of the Temple and the Tab-
ernacle and Christian Symbolism of the Holy Sepulchre and the Heavenly Tabernacle, in: Jewish
Art 19/20 (1993/1994), p. 147–168, here p. 150; Robert Ousterhout: The Temple, the Sepulchre, and
the Martyrion of the Savior, in: Gesta 29.1 (1990), p. 44–53.
6 Bernard Hamilton: The Impact of Crusader Jerusalem on Western Christendom, in: The Catholic
Historical Review 80.4 (1994), p. 699.
7 While the glass windows that frame the exposures of the rock are modern, its general setting and
concealment within the architecture is a crusaders’ innovation, which determined the setting and
appearance of the rock up to the present day.
8 For example, Denys Pringle (ed.): Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, 1187–1291, Crusade
Texts in Translation, Burlington 2011, p. 230.

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48 Yamit Rachman-Schrire

2 A closer view of the cleft of the Rock of Golgotha, Jerusalem, Church of the Holy
Sepulchre

of the rock. The German pilgrim Theoderic, arriving in Jerusalem sometime between
1169 and 1174, after the crusaders’ reconstruction of the Chapel of Golgotha, reports:

“The place where the Cross itself stood […] is mounted on a big step […] and the hole
shown is deep and almost wide enough to put one’s head into […] in it the pilgrims
press their head and forehead to show love and reverence for the crucified one. But on
the right Mount Calvary goes down steeply, and in the floor has a long, wide, and very
deep crack. It was cracked at the death of Christ.”9

Theoderic’s testimony suggests that the openings of the rock were accessible to the pil-
grims’ sight and touch. Later pilgrims’ accounts follow this line, and elaborate on the
devotees’ custom to insert their heads, hands and entire bodies into the clefts of the rock.
An anonymous English pilgrim whose account is dated to 1344–1345, notes: “The place
where stood erect the cross of Jesus is visible, into which people put their heads to the
shoulders.”10 This pilgrim further elaborates on the blood that Christ – whom he com-

  9 John Wilkinson, Joyce Hill, and William F. Ryan (ed.): Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 1099–1185, London
1988, p. 274–314, here p. 285f. Theoderic: Libellus de locis sanctis, in: Robert B.C. Huygens (ed.):
Peregrinationes tres. CCCM 139 (1994), p. 142–197, here p. 155f.
10 Eugene Hoade (ed.): Western Pilgrims, Jerusalem 1952, p.  66. “Montem Calvarie, que rupis est
magna […] locus ubi crux Jhesu extitit erecta patens est, in quo ponunt homines usque ad humeros
capita sua […].” Anonymous Englishman: Itinerarium, in: Girolamo Golubovich (ed.): Biblioteca
Bio-Bibliografica della Terra Santa e dell’Oriente 4 (1923), p. 427–460, here p. 452.

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 Christ’s Side-Wound and Francis’ Stigmatization at La-Verna 49

pares to a pelican – shed on Adam’s skull.11 In medieval piety the pelican was perceived as
a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection. For this reason a pelican was sometimes
integrated into visual images of the crucifixion, usually depicted on top of the cross, nour-
ishing her young.12 The pilgrim’s utilization of the figure of the pelican in the face of the
rock’s aperture is telling, for it provides a glimpse into the visual and textual allegories
stored in his mind before arriving in Jerusalem, and to the manner in which these were
projected upon the sacred place itself.
An exceptional testimony for the pilgrims’ devotional practices of the clefts of the
Rock of Golgotha appears in the account of Felix Fabri (~1441–1502), the Dominican
preacher from Ulm and a two-time pilgrim to the Holy Land.13 Facing the Rock of Gol-
gotha at the Chapel of the Crucifixion, Fabri reports of the somatic practices he and his
fellow-pilgrims applied at the rock:

“[E]ach one as best as he could crawled to the socket-hole of the cross, kissed the place
with exceeding great devotion, and placed his face, eyes, and mouth over the socket-
hole, from whence in very truth there breathes forth an exceeding sweet scent,
whereby men are visibly refreshed.” 14

He then continues to describe how they crawled into the cleft of the rock: “We went up to
this rent one after another, and kissed it, putting our heads into it and as much of our
bodies as we could.”15 Fabri’s description of the pilgrims’ veneration of the rock of Gol-
gotha, including their actual penetration deep into it, is remarkably elaborated; yet, other
pilgrims also relate to the somatic practices applied at the cleft of the rock. The German
pilgrim Heinrich von Zedlitz, visiting the Holy Land in 1493, explains that pilgrims could
enter their hands up to their elbows into the hole in the rock, and could fully lay their

11 Ibid.
12 According to medieval tradition, the pelican pierces its breast to feed its children with its own
blood. For this reason, a pelican sometimes accompanies artistic descriptions of the crucifixion as
a symbol for Christ’s sacrificial blood. See for example in the famous fresco of the Crucifixion in
the Oratorio of San Giovanni Battista in Urbino.
13 For Fabri’s Evagatorium and other pilgrimage writings: Kathryne Beebe: Pilgrim and preacher. The
audiences and observant spirituality of Friar Felix Fabri (1437/8–1502), Oxford 2014.
14 Aubrey Stewart (ed.): The Book of the Wanderings of Brother Felix Fabri (Circa 1480–1483 A. D.),
PPTS 8 (1897), p. 365. “Finita autem oratione unus post alium ad petram sanctam, quae promine-
bat supra fundamentum, accessit, et ad foramen crucis se quilibet juxta loci dispositionem traxit,
et locum ipsum eximia cum devotione deosculabatur et faciem, oculos, os quilibet super cruces
foramen posuit, de quo nimirum foramine dulcis admodum spirat odor sensibilis, qui perceptibi-
liter hominem recreat. Brachium, etiam manus in ipsum foramen misimus usque ad suum fun-
dum. Et cum his indulgentias pleneriae remissionis accepimus.” Konrad D. Hassler (ed.): Fratris
Felicis Fabri Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae, Arabiae et Aegypti Peregrinationem, Stuttgart 1843,
vol. 2, p. 299.
15 Ibid.

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50 Yamit Rachman-Schrire

bodies in the cleft.16 An anonymous French pilgrim arriving in Jerusalem in 1518, describes
how pilgrims touched the hole of the cross with their hands and arms “par dévotion”.17
While art historians and historians attempted to reconstruct the architecture and decora-
tive plan of the crusaders’ Chapel of Golgotha, only little attention has been given in these
studies to the role that the Rock of Golgotha had played in the formation of the sacred site
and in the pilgrims’ experience of the place. 18 In order to reconstruct what notions and
ideas shaped the pilgrims’ viewing of the Rock of Golgotha, we should turn our gaze back
to Europe, to the places from which the pilgrims journeyed to the Holy Land. Western
piety had been undergoing tremendous alterations in the twelfth century, with the emer-
gence of affective piety to Christ’s humanity and sufferings, and the desire to imitate
Christ literally.19 These trends should be the immediate context to analyze and interpret
pilgrims’ devotion to the cleft and the hole of the Rock of Golgotha. In what follows I map
the spatial and visual associations between the wounds of Christ and the Rock of Golgotha
as these are reconstructed in late medieval texts and visual images. I suggest that pilgrims
arriving in Jerusalem viewed the clefts of the Rock of Golgotha as an extension of the
wounded body of Christ. My interpretation is based on texts which encourage the devo-
tees to enter the body of ‘Christ-the-rock’ via his clefts, as well as on visual imagery relating
to the gaping wound of Christ in images of the arma Christi, and to St Francis’ stigmatiza-
tion on the clefts of the site of La-Verna which is characterized as the New Golgotha.

Into the clefts of Christ-the-rock

A firm association between the body of Christ and the Rock of Golgotha is to be found in
late medieval exegesis, via allegorical or metaphorical interpretations, which offer a paral-
lel between the wounds of Christ and the clefts of the rock. Such an association appears in
the interpretation of Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) to the Song of Songs 2:14, where he

16 Die Jerusalemfahrt des Heinrich von Zedlitz (1493), in: Reinhold Röhricht (ed.): Zeitschrift des
deutschen Palästina-Vereines (1894), p. 99–114, p. 185–200, p. 277–301, here p. 278.
17 Voyage de Venise au Saint-Sépulcre, in: Jean-Luc Nardone (ed.): La représentation de Jérusalem et
de la Terre Sainte dans les récits des pèlerins européens au XVIe siècle, Paris 2007, p. 75.
18 Dorothea French suggested a cosmological interpretation of Golgotha as the centre of the earth
where sensus allegoricus and sensus literalis are fused. French is right in indicating the fusion of
these senses at the holy place. Yet, her cosmological explanation for the pilgrims’ aspiration of
entering the clefts of the rock is problematic: she merges different locations within the church (i.e.
Christ’s sepulchre, Golgotha) and does not take into account the existence of an actual site, at the
choir of the church, where the ‘centre of the earth’ was shown to pilgrims. Dorothea R. French:
Journeys to the Center of the Earth. Medieval and Renaissance Pilgrimages to Mount Calvary, in:
Barbara N. Sargent-Baur (ed.): Journeys toward God. Pilgrimage and Crusade, Kalamazoo 1992,
p. 45–81.
19 Richard Kieckhefer: Major Currents in Late Medieval Devotion, in: Jill Raitt, Bernard McGinn and
John Meyendorff (ed.): Christian Spirituality. High Middle Ages and Reformation, New York 1987,
p. 75–108.

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 Christ’s Side-Wound and Francis’ Stigmatization at La-Verna 51

encourages the devotees to enter into Christ-the-rock via the clefts of his body (“per
foramina corporis”).20 Bernard’s notion of the wounds of Christ as the clefts of the rock is
an elaboration of a well-established scriptural and patristic tradition that offered alle-
gorical connections between Christ and biblical stones and rocks, often formulated as
lapis est christus.21 The mystical aspiration of entering Christ’s body via his wounds / clefts
gained popularity in the late Middle Ages, as it is manifested in various literary genres,
including devotional manuals and works. For example, in the Orationes et meditationes de
vita Christi, attributed to the Cistercian Thomas a Kempis (1380–1471) and among the
most influential devotional compositions in late medieval Europe, the author advices his
readers:

“Enter then, enter boldly, O my soul, through the bowels of the mercy of Thy God as
He hangs upon the Cross; enter into the deep clefts of His Wounds, and take refuge
there from the serpent who everywhere, both openly and secretly, is laying snares for
thee. There lie still in safety, as a turtle-dove cooing in the wilderness, as a cushat lying
hid in the cleft of a mighty rock; spurn all earthly joys; meditate on the sacred Wounds
of Christ; and hope, relying on Them, to win those heavenly rewards which He Him-
self has in store for thee.”22

By evoking the body of Christ as he is hung on the cross, the author of the Orationes et
meditationes suggests a link between the notion of the dove that nests in the wounds of
Christ-the-rock, and the Rock of Golgotha. The same notion is also to be found in the
Ancrene Wisse, written in the mid fourteenth century, originally for three anchorite young
sisters, but later distributed to much wider audiences:23 “Name Jesus often, and invoke the
aid of his passion […]. Fly into his wounds; creep into them with thy thought, they are all

20 Bernard of Clairvaux: Supra Cantica, Sermo LXI.3, LXI.4. Song of Songs 2:14: “columba mea in
foraminibus petrae in caverna maceriae ostende mihi faciem tuam sonet vox tua” (English transla-
tion: Ann Matter: The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity,
Philadelphia 1990, p. 137–138: “O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of
the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice.”).
21 Gerhard Ladner: The Symbolism of the Biblical Cornerstone in the Medieval West, in: Medieval
Studies 4 (1942), p. 43–60; Yamit Rachman-Schrire: Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae. Stones Telling
the Story of Jerusalem, in: Annette Hoffmann and Gerhard Wolf (ed.): Jerusalem as Narrative
Space. Erzählraum Jerusalem, Leiden 2012, p. 353–366.
22 Michael Iosephus Pohl (ed.): Thomae Hemerken a Kempis. Opera Omnia. Orationes et Medita-
tiones de Vita Christi, vol.  4, Freiburg  i.  Br. 1895, p.  303f. English translation: William Duthoit
(ed.): Thomas a Kempis, Prayers and Meditations on the Life of Christ, London 1908, p. 182. In
another passage the author specifically relates to Christ as the Rock whom Longinus’ sword stroke:
“But the brawny soldier Longinus, when he opened Christ’s right side, struck the Rock with his
lance so fierce a blow, that thereout blood and water have never ceased to pour”, ibid., p. 181. Com-
pare p. 115 and p. 278.
23 For the popularity of the Text, which has been survived in 14 manuscripts in French, Latin and
English, see: Janet Grayson: Structure and Imagery in Ancrene Wisse, Hanover et al. 1974, p. 3–8.

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52 Yamit Rachman-Schrire

open. He loved us much who permitted such cavities to be made in him, that we might
hide ourselves in them.”24
While the analogy between Christ’s wounds and the clefts of the rock is a conven-
tional rhetoric in devotional literature in this period, the author of the Ancrene Wisse
further elaborates this idea:

“‘Ingredere in petram, et abscondere in fossa humo;’ ‘Go into the rock,’ saith the
prophet, ‘and hide thee in the pit which is dug in the earth;’ that is, in the wounds of
our Lord’s flesh, which was as if dug into with the blunt nails, as he said long before
in the Psalter, ‘Foderunt manus meas et pedes meos;’ that is, they dug my feet and my
hands. He did not say, they pierced my feet and my hands, but dug. For, according to
this Latin, as our teachers say, the nails were so blunt that they digged his flesh, and
broke the bones rather than pierced them, to torment him the sorer.”25

Insisting that Christ’s wounds were dug in his body, in the same way that cavities are
formed in the rock, the author of the Ancrene Wisse intensifies the idea of Christ’s wounds
as the cavities of the rock. As Cate Gunn argues, this is “an example of how the spiritual-
ity of the Ancrene Wisse occupies a position on the cusp between traditional monastic
ideas and images, and their adaptation for late medieval popular devotion”.26

Christ’s wounds as a place for contemplation

The aspiration of entering Christ’s body via his wounds is closely connected to late medi-
eval visual iconography of the arma Christi with the isolated side-wound of Christ. In this
iconography, the side-wound is detached from the body of Christ, or replaces it, and
becomes in itself a devotional object.27 For example in a late fifteenth century German
woodcut, the isolated side-wound in the shape of a mandorla replaces the body of Christ
(fig. 3). The image of Veronica serves as the head of Christ, and the wounded hands and
feet attached to the left and to the right side of the body / wound serve to reconfigure the
whole body of Christ. The wound / body of Christ is painted in red and contains what
Caroline Walker Bynum calls “an abbreviated version of the arma Christi”, that is, a little

24 James Morton, (ed.): The Ancren Riwle: A Treatise on the Rules and Duties of Monastic Life, Lon-
don 1853, p. 293.
25 Ibid.
26 Cate Gunn: Ancrene Wisse. From Pastoral Literature to Vernacular Spirituality, Cardiff 2008,
p. 56.
27 David S. Areford: The Passion Measured: A Late-Medieval Diagram of the Body of Christ, in:
Alasdair A. MacDonald et al. (ed.): The Broken Body: Passion Devotion in Late-Medieval Culture,
Groningen 1998, p. 211–238.

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 Christ’s Side-Wound and Francis’ Stigmatization at La-Verna 53

3 Arma Christi with the wounds of Christ,

c. 1490, woodcut, 12 × 8.1 cm, Washington/
DC, National Gallery of Art

yellow cross, mocking titulus, and the heart with three nails.28 Two scrolls to the left and
to the right sides of the wound grant the believers with indulgences, and claim to specify
the real measurements of Christ’s side wound and height.29 Gerhard Wolf stresses the
interplay between fragmentation and reconfiguration in this image, pointing out that the
scrolls on both sides of the wound / body are like the skin removed to the side in order to
expose the wound; the wound invites the beholder to look into the body of Christ, where
the cross was fixed as a spinal bone crowned by the heart and the nails.30 The substitution
of the body of Christ for his wound is comparable to the substitution of the Rock of Gol-
gotha for its openings. David Areford highlighted the spatial dimension of the side-wound
in this image that offers an “effective devotional tool which allowed a highly corporeal and
spatial access to the body of Christ”.31 Here, the pictorial arrangement suggests a reversal

28 Caroline Walker Bynum: Violent Imagery in Late Medieval Piety, in: Bulletin of the German His-
torical Institute 30 (2001), p. 3–36, here p. 20.
29 The scroll to the right claims that the image is a life-size representation of the side wound, and the
scroll to the left claims that the little cross within the side wound measured forty times equals the
height of Christ in his humanity. Cf. Bynum 2001 (see n. 28).
30 Gerhard Wolf: Schleier und Spiegel. Traditionen des Christusbildes und die Bildkonzepte der
Renaissance, Munich 2002, p. 179–181.
31 Areford 1998 (see n. 27), p. 211. For interpretations of the space-like gapped wound as the vagina
and the womb, see: Caroline Walker Bynum: Fragmentation and Redemption. Essays on Gender

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54 Yamit Rachman-Schrire

4 Arma Christi with the

wound of Christ,
Heures de Maréchal de
Boucicaut, early
fifteenth century,
Paris, MJAP –
MS 1311, fol. 242

relationship between ‘body’ and ‘site’ as the wound contains the cross. In another image,
a fifteenth century arma Christi from the Hours of the Maréchal de Boucicaut (fig. 4), the
side-wound of Christ is positioned beneath the cross. Its intense red colour, horizontal

and the Human Body in Medieval Religion, New York 1991, p. 182; Karma Lochrie: Mystical Acts,
Queer Tendencies, in: Karma Lochrie, Peggy McCracken, and James Alfred Schultz (ed.): Con-
structing Medieval Sexuality, Minneapolis 1997, p.  180–200, here p.  189f.; Sarah Alison Miller:
Virgins, Mothers, Monsters: Late-Medieval Readings of the Female Body Out of Bounds, unpub-
lished PhD diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008, p. 238. For the visualization of
Christ’s side wound as a performative space, see: Vibeke Olson: Penetrating the Void. Picturing the
Wound in Christ’s Side as a Performative Space, in: Larissa Tracy and Kelly DeVries (ed.): Wounds
and Wound Repair in Medieval Culture, Leiden 2015, p. 314–339, here p. 316f.

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 Christ’s Side-Wound and Francis’ Stigmatization at La-Verna 55

position and relatively large size make this form at the foot of the cross especially promi-
nent in the whole composition. In this setting the wound seems projected upon the rocky
ground, while its location beneath the cross, seems to allude to the Rock of Golgotha – the
exact site of the crucifixion where the actual wounds of Christ were torn in his flesh.32

Christ’s wounds, Francis’ Stigmatization and La-Verna

as the “New Jerusalem”
Spatial and visual associations between the wounds of Christ and the cracked Rock of
Golgotha are also found in fourteenth and fifteenth century visual images of the stigmata
of St Francis. According to Francis’ hagiographers, in 1224, two years before his death,
while Francis was in deep prayer on Mount La-Verna near Arezzo, he had a vision of a
seraph who descended from heaven. The apparition miraculously impressed the five
wounds of Christ into Francis’ flesh.33 By receiving the wounds of the Stigmata, Francis
was re-assured as the alter christus who has performed in his life the closest model of
Christ himself. In visual iconography of the stigmatization of St Francis, the clefts of
Mount La-Verna (also Alverna, della Vernia), the place where Francis is said to have
received the stigmata, are visually and formally associated with the clefts of the Rock of
Golgotha.34 This is evident, for example, in an enameled morse dated to the first quarter
of the fourteenth century (pl. 8): St Francis is situated in a rocky landscape across from a
small chapel, receiving the stigmata wounds on his hands, feet, and side. Gilded rays
descend from the limbs of the seraph, searing the flesh of Saint Francis, whose body, like
that of the heavenly seraph, is surrounded by an aura of light. The rocky setting of the
stigmatization is very prominent in this image: the rocks are cracked and show their
depths which are filled with red colour. Intensive red and brownish hues dominate the
whole image, the trees to the right of Francis, the seraph, Francis’ coat and the altar set in
front of him with its leg fixed in the rock’s caverns. The vivid red colour in the clefts of the
rocks portrays the whole mountain as a ‘bleeding’ landscape, openly exposing its ‘wounds’
full of blood. Such a description echoes narratives of the stigmata of St Francis that paral-
lel Mount La-Verna and the Rock of Golgotha, in the fourteenth century text Fioretti di
San Francesco, based on earlier oral and literary traditions. In the ‘second consideration
on the wounds of Francis’, the author writes:

32 Compare with Elina Gertsman who has recently discussed the translocation of Christ’s wounds
from his body, onto other spaces in a fifteenth century German woodcut printed in Ulm: Wander-
ing Wounds. The Urban Body in Imitatio Christi, in: Traey / De Vies 2015 (see n. 31), p. 340–366.
33 Francis’ Hagiography was written by Thomas of Celano before 1230 as the Vita prima and Vita
secunda. Between 1263 and 1266 St Bonaventure rewrote the works of Celano, and composed the
Legenda maior and the Legenda minor which became the official biography of Francis.
34 Bonaventure emphasized the mountain-like appearance of La-Verna, and that the seraph in the
Stigmatization was Christ attached to the cross, with six wings.

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56 Yamit Rachman-Schrire

“[A]s St Francis was considering the formation of the mountain, and marvelling at the
great fissures and openings in the solid rock, it was revealed to him by God in prayer
that these strange caverns had been made miraculously at the hour of the Passion of
Christ, when, according to the Evangelist’s words, the rocks were rent; and this was by
the will of God, who manifested himself thus wonderfully upon Mount Alvernia,
because there the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ was to be renewed in the soul of his
servant by love and compassion, and in his body by the impression of the sacred, holy
stigmata.”35

This text emphasizes the topographical and morphological similarities between the Rock
of Golgotha and the cleft rocks of La-Verna, the latter, was created in the rock at the time
of the Passion of Christ. Both text and image confirm the theme of Franciscus alter Chris-
tus, and by extension La-Verna alter Golgotha.36
To conclude, pilgrims’ arriving at the holy land carried in their minds an ensemble of
literal and visual images, which they have projected upon the sacred site itself. It is possible
to see how the cleft of the Rock of Golgotha, which has been emphasized in the architec-
ture of the Chapel of the Crucifixion, could have evoked in the believers the image of the
gaping wound of Christ or the clefts of La-Verna, where St Francis, the ultimate follower
of Christ, received the wounds of the Stigmata. As the pilgrims’ testimonies suggest, the
clefts of the rock turn into performative space which received its meaning from the
encounter with the devotees. From a formal point of view, the hole and the cleft stood for
the entire rock, constituting synecdochel relations with it. By entering the clefts of the

35 The Little Flowers of St Francis is an Italian adaptation of the early fourteenth  century Latin
account, the actus Beati Francisci et sociorum Eius. “Ivi a pochi di, istandosi Santo Francesco allato
alla detta cella, e considerando la disposizione del Monte, e maraviglian dosi delle grandissime
fessure ed aperture di sassi grandissimi, si puose in orazione; e allora gli fu rivelato da Dio, che
quelle fessure cosi maravigliose erano istate fatte miracolosamente, nell’ora della Passione di
Cristo, quando, secondo che dice il Vangelista, le pietre si spezzarono. E questo volle Iddio, che
singularmente apparesse in su quell Monte della Vernia, perchè quivi si dovea rinnovare La Pas-
sione del nostro Signore Gesù Cristo nell’anima sua, per amore e compassione, e nel corpo suo per
impression delle sacre sante Istimate.” Adolfo Padovan, (ed.): I fioretti di san francesco e il cantico
del sole, Milan 1907, p. 179f. English translation: Of the Second Consideration of the Holy Stigmata,
in: The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi (CCEL, public domain), http://www.ewtn.com/
library/MARY/flowers1.htm, (30.05.2018). For a discussion of the parallels between Golgotha and
another holy mountain, Montserrat, relating to the distinct features of cracked landscape, and in
the context of the development of the imitatio Christi, see Lily Arad: An Absent Presence: Jerusa-
lem in Montserrat, in: Miscellania Liturgica Catalana 20 (2012), p. 71–107.
36 Yamit Rachman-Schrire: The Stones of the Christian Holy Places of Jerusalem and Western Imag-
ination: Image, Place, Text (1099–1517), unpublished PhD diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusa-
lem, 2015, p. 66–68. Michele Bacci: Il Golgotha come Simulacro, in: Annette Hoffmann, Manuela
de Giorgi and Nicola Suthor (ed.): Bildkulturen im Dialog. Festschrift für Gerhard Wolf, Munich
2013, p. 111–122.

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 Christ’s Side-Wound and Francis’ Stigmatization at La-Verna 57

Rock of Golgotha, pilgrims could fulfill their aspiration of entering the body of Christ-
the-rock at the actual site in Jerusalem, where Christ’s wounds were torn in his flesh.
Whereas not all accounts suggest an explicit reference to the images pilgrims held in their
minds, Margery Kempe in her testimony explicitly refers to the image of the dove in the
clefts of the Rock while reflecting on the body of Christ: “his precious tender body, all rent
and torn with scourges, more full of wounds than a dove-cote ever was of holes”.37 The
sweet scent, which emanates from the hole in the rock, as Fabri recalls, is an attribution of
Christ’s body, and specifically of his wounds.38 The clefts of the Rock of Golgotha offered
the devotees the opportunity to unify with Christ in its historical and Eucharistic senses,
both incarnated in the blood stains within the clefts of the rock. Notably, pilgrims’ imag-
ination of the clefts of the rock as a place of refuge is also related to the biblical models of
Moses, who saw God in the cleft of the rock (Exod 33:22), and Thomas who entered his
fingers into the wounds of Christ, in order to recognize the Resurrection (John 20:27).39
Reconstructing the visuality and the history of reception of the Rock of Golgotha shows
that it functioned as a performative object, whose meaning was shaped and re-shaped via
the encounter with contemporaries and the devotional imagery they held in their minds
prior to their arrival in the Holy Land. Such an inquiry allows us a glimpse into the nature
of mediation and the agency of stones in late medieval cultures, and demonstrates the
central role the rock played in the pilgrims’ imagination and experience of the site of the
Crucifixion.

37 The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Barry Windeatt, Harmondsworth 1985, p. 104f.
38 The sweet scent of Christ is already mentioned by Paulus, who said that the sacrifice of Christ was
a “fragrant aroma to God” (Eph. 5:2). For medieval “olfactory theology”, see Constance Classen,
The Colour of Angels: Cosmology, Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination (London: Routledge,
2002), p. 53–55; Graziano, Wounds of Love, p. 80–84. For Christ’s foreskin exuding the odour of
sanctity, see David L. Gollaher, Circumcision: A History of the World’s Most Controversial Sur-
gery, New York 2000, p. 37.
39 Both figurations appear in Bernard’s sermon in comparison to the clefts of Christ body and were
wide spread in visual iconography.

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 Farbtafeln 101

7 Buonamico Buffalmacco: Thebaid, 1336–1342, fresco, Pisa, Camposanto

8 Saint Francis of Assisi receiving

the Stigmata, morse, Tuscany,
1300–1325, copper gilt, with
champlevé enamel, diam.
10.8 cm, New York, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art

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