As regards the Hand of the sufferer, it was procured and treasured up by his relatives the Gerards: and the following remarkable occurrence is connected with it.
In the year 1813 a young man named Joseph Lamb, then residing at Eccles, near Trafford Hall, about four miles from Manchester, fell from a rick of considerable height to the ground, and received a violent injury in the back. He was so injured that he could neither stand nor walk and suffered very considerable pain; but after many attempts had been made by physicians to give him relief and effect a cure, his case at a later stage was unanimously pronounced to be incurable. In religion he was a Roman Catholic, having been converted to that ancient faith from being an Anabaptist—a sect to which his father still belonged. Local circumstances had led to his investigating the martyrdom of the venerable priest, Edmund Arrowsmith, who, as already recounted, gave up his life in the cause of God at Lancaster, on the 28th of August, 1628. Of this holy man a Hand had been long and carefully preserved at Sir William Gerard’s, of Garswood, near Wigan, where it was and is deservedly venerated and held in respect by all Roman Catholics. The sufferer Lamb, finding that the skill and power of man could do nothing for him, conceived a firm conviction that it would please the Almighty to restore him to health by the instrumentality of this relic, and he consequently most earnestly and systematically prayed to God that it might be so. His parents consequently, in response to his urgent entreaties, on October 2nd, 1814, had him conveyed in a covered cart from his own house near Trafford Hall to Garswood, a distance of fourteen miles.[51] In a state of considerable suffering, and quite unable to assist himself, he was lifted out of the cart and carried into the Roman Catholic chapel, where he was placed before the altar. Then the “Holy Hand,” as it is termed, was brought forth; the sacred sign of the cross was solemnly made over the affected part of the poor suffering man’s back; when, in an instant, he felt freedom from pain and found his former health and strength perfectly restored. He immediately rose, stood up for some time in prayer, and then walked, without any assistance whatsoever, to his relatives and friends who were gathered at the chief entrance of the chapel. He returned home quite recovered and perfectly well, and so remained, up to the 19th of September, 1816.[52] The result of this miraculous intervention was that several of his kinsmen and acquaintances became converts to the religion which he had elected to follow; and these, together with many Roman Catholics who became acquainted with Almighty God’s merciful visitation of him, joined in a solemn act of thanksgiving, by assembling to sing the Te Deum in the chapel of Garswood.[53]
Thus, then, we see the prophecy of a Christian priest, who was unjustly and illegally condemned and cruelly murdered, exactly and most strikingly fulfilled; and a wonderful sign bestowed from God to man of Eternal Truth, in the supernatural cure wrought some two centuries and more afterwards upon this Lancashire farm-labourer.
Here something may be properly put on record, regarding cases in which visible marks and tokens of the Passion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ have been supernaturally and miraculously impressed upon God’s saints and servants, in order to set forth before the eyes of man, as a matter of sight and not as a matter of faith, the truth of the Revelation of Almighty God, through His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
The first recorded instance of stigmatization is that of S. Francis of Assisi, in the thirteenth century. From the life of this distinguished saint, written by S. Bonaventure (chapters xii. and xv.), we gather the following particulars of these remarkable phenomena.
It was the custom of the saint, from time to time, to retire into the solitudes of Mount Alverna, in the Apennines, in order the more easily to give himself up to prayer and meditation. “While fasting there for forty days, being in prayer, on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, and feeling within his soul an intense desire to be crucified with his Lord, he beheld, descending from heaven towards him, a seraph, having six wings as it were of fire.[54] When the celestial messenger came near to him, there appeared between the wings the form of One crucified, with the hands and feet stretched out upon the cross. Two wings rose above the head, two were spread forth in flight, while the others veiled the whole body.” Francis felt a great joy at the apparition, and yet, at the same time, a deep sorrow at beholding Him Whom his soul loved, so cruelly fastened to the Cross, the thought of which pierced his heart as with a sword of grief. It was presently revealed to him that he was to imitate the Passion of our Lord.
“The vision disappearing, his soul was filled with heavenly light, while a marvellous sign was left imprinted on his limbs. On his hand and feet were the marks of the nails, as he had beheld in the seraphic vision, and on his right side was a wound, as if made by a lance’s thrust. His hands and feet appeared transfixed with the nails, their heads being seen in the upper part of the feet, and the points on the reverse sides. The heads of these nails were round and black, and the points somewhat long and bent, as if turned back; so that between them and the skin there was the space of a finger. They could be moved with ease; for on the one side they were embedded in the flesh, whilst on the other they were clear of it: yet it was not possible to draw them out, as we are assured by S. Clare, who, after the saint’s death, essayed to do so, but could not succeed. The wound in the side was deep, and of the width of three fingers. It was red, and the saint’s habit was often stained by the blood which flowed from it.”
These stigmata were seen during his life by the reigning Pope Alexander with many of his cardinals; and after his death, by more than fifty brethren together, by S. Clare and many of her sisters, and an innumerable crowd of seculars, who came from all parts of the country to be witnesses of these wonders.
At the close of the seventeenth century, another case of stigmatization occurred to Veronica Juliana, a nun; and her examination by the bishop of her diocese, aided by several physicians, was of so strict and severe a character, that deception on her part would have been quite impossible.
In the early part of the same century, Joanna di Jesu Maria, a Spanish nun, was subjected to even a more rigorous examination, before a court composed of the Commissary of the Inquisition, the Suffragan Bishop, several of the secular and regular clergy of the district, of many learned men, and two distinguished physicians. In this case, the subject of the phenomena bore not only the wounds on her hands, feet, and side, from which blood and water frequently flowed, but also around her head, as from the crown of thorns, a deep wound, which, in the opinion of the doctors, penetrated to the skull. They, furthermore, declared by oath that the wounds were not natural, and could not possibly be the effect of fraud.