Hesse, Chesterton, Carretto: le stimmate di Francesco negli scrittori del Novecento

20th-century writers explored the stigmata of Saint Francis as a way to challenge rationalism and materialism.

In his 1923 book Saint Francis, Gilbert Keith Chesterton addressed the skepticism of the middle class. Chesterton, who had recently converted to Catholicism, argued that treating the stigmata as something shameful or taboo was equivalent to viewing the wounds of Jesus Christ as personal defects. He suggested that many intellectuals mistakenly treat religion as a philosophy rather than a real encounter between humanity and the divine.

Louis de Wohl also addressed the event in his 1958 work The Joyful Beggar. De Wohl portrayed the stigmata as a way for Francis to participate in the sufferings of both Jesus and humanity. Other writers, including Hermann Hesse, were also moved by the accounts of the stigmata.