by Carolyn Gage (Author)

Stigmata dramatizes the rise and fall of the 17th century, Italian nun, Benedetta Carlini, who becomes elected abbess on the strength of her miraculous manifestation of stigmata, and who is eventually tried by the Inquisition for perpetrating a hoax, as well as committing "peccatum mutum"-- the so-called "silent sin" of homosexuality.