The Seat of Life. What a Lesson from the Stigmatized Saints

In Greco-Roman medicine, the liver was considered as the seat of life (hepatocentrism). Since the seventeenth century, the heart had progressively replaced the liver as the central organ of the body (cardiocentrism). Interestingly, this transition could have influenced a different reproduction of the wound in the stigmatized saints of the Catholic Church. In the history, there are numerous examples of saints, who reported having received the "stigmata" on their bodies from God, i.e. miraculous wounds that reproduced the wounds caused on the body of Christ from the traumas suffered during his Passion. The Gospels report that Jesus on the cross was pierced in his side with a spear by a Roman soldier, without clearly defining where this happened. Since the soldier's gesture was aimed at verifying the actual death of Christ, ancient authors, influenced by the medical knowledge of that period, tend to believe that spear aimed at hitting a vital organ, i.e. the liver.