Next “Thursday in the Museums” dedicated to the 800th anniversary of Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata

Franciscan Echoes in the Vatican Pinacoteca

“Celebrating Francis in the time of Francis. Franciscan echoes in the Vatican Pinacoteca, 800 years after the appearance of the Stigmata”, is the theme of a conference that will be held at the Vatican Museums at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, 24 October. The event, which is part of the “Thursday in the Museums” initiative, will be live streamed.

Dedicated to the Patron of Italy, just over one month since the liturgical memorial of 17 September, which commemorated 800 years since Saint Francis received the Stigmata, the conference will be introduced by Barbara Jatta, Director of the Directorate of Museums and Cultural Heritage. Claudia Bolgia of the University of Udine, Anna Pizzamano of the Vatican Museums’ Department of Byzantine-Medieval Art and Adele Breda, former Curator of the same department will deliver speeches during the Conference.

For the occasion, participants will be able to visit the medieval section of the Vatican Pinacoteca, which includes a wall dedicated to the Poverello of Assisi and his time. In Room 1, a mosaic of the face of Saint Luke, one of the few fragments remaining from the ancient façade of the Basilica of Saint Peter, will be displayed for the very first time.

The upcoming “Thursday in the Museums” is dedicated to remembering Saint Francis, starting from his Stigmata and retracing that time through documentary material and cultural and artistic testimonials. According to tradition, in the summer of 1224, two years before his death, the Poverello retreated to Mount La Verna for a time of prayer of silence. On that occasion, he asked God to be able to share the Passion of Christ. His prayers were granted and a seraph appeared before him. The following is Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio’s account of the event:

“Seeing this, he was overwhelmed and his heart was flooded with a mixture of joy and sorrow. He rejoiced at the gracious way Christ looked upon him under the appearance of the Seraph, but the fact that He was fastened to a cross pierced his soul with a sword of compassionate sorrow. As the vision was disappearing, it left in his heart a marvelous fire and imprinted in his flesh a likeness of signs no less marvelous. For immediately the marks of nails began to appear in his hands and feet just as he had seen a little before in the figure of the man crucified. His hands and feet seemed to be pierced through the center by nails, with the heads of the nails appearing on the inner side of the hands and the upper side of the feet and their points on the opposite sides. …. Also his right side, as if pierced with a lance, was marked with a red wound from which his sacred blood often flowed”. (Legenda Maior-Major Legend of Saint Francis)

Trappist monk, Thomas Merton (1915-1968), wrote the following about Saint Francis’ Stigmata: “The stigmatization of St. Francis was a divine sign of the fact that he was, of all saints, the most Christlike. He had succeeded better than any other in the work of reproducing in his life the simplicity and the poverty and the love of God and men which marked the life of Jesus. …. Merely to know St. Francis is to understand the Gospel, and to follow him in his true, integral spirit, is to live the Gospel in all its fullness… .St. Francis was, as all saints must try to be, simply another Christ…. The risen Christ lived again perfectly in this saint who was completely possessed and transformed by the Spirit of divine charity”.