Vision of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich was born on 8 September 1774 into a poor peasant family at Flamschen near Coesfeld in Westphalia, Germany. From childhood she was of a deeply prayerful and sickly nature, and after long difficulty entered an Augustinian convent at Dülmen in 1802. When her convent was suppressed in the upheavals of the age, she became bedridden, and from about 1812 was reported to bear the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, upon her body, drawing both wonder and investigation.

During her years of illness she received a great many mystical visions of the life, Passion, and death of Christ, of the Blessed Virgin, and of the early Church, which were written down by the poet Clemens Brentano, who visited her daily. These accounts, later published as The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ and The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, became widely read and influential. It should be noted that scholars debate how much of the published text reflects her own visions and how much Brentano's literary elaboration, and for this reason the Church, in beatifying her in 2004, focused on the holiness of her life rather than pronouncing on the writings. She died on 9 February 1824.