Within the context of the late medieval and early modern Catholic Church, stigmata are often understood as miraculous bodily marks echoing the wounds received by Christ on the cross. The most famous were those received by Francis of Assisi (d. 1226) after a vision when he was staying at a hermitage on Mount La Verna, north of Arezzo, in 1224. In the life of Saint Francis, accepted as the official version at the general chapter of the Franciscan Order held in Pisa in 1263, Saint Bonaventure (d. 1274) described their appearance: nail-like protuberances in the centre of the hands and feet, and a bleeding side wound. The wounds were miraculous, their placement on Francis's body was clearly significant, and the Franciscans promoted them as unique.

However, the marks on Francis's body did not appear ex nihilo and the history of stigmata is a long one. Body markings referred to as stigmata had been known since Antiquity. It was only in the century following the death of Saint Francis that the definition of stigmata as miraculous marks, mirroring those received by Christ on the cross, gained ground. It was not uncontested and a wider definition of stigmata was actively promoted in some quarters, particularly by the Dominicans.

Francis's stigmata appeared within a culture of affective piety, one that the order he founded did much to propagate, but which was already embedded in the religious practices of the previous century.