Mel Gibson’s Screenwriter

Blessed Catherine Anne Emmerich (1774-1824) was a German mystic and stigmatic whose visions were collected in a book titled The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, a detailed account of Christ’s suffering and death based on Emmerich’s visions. The book gained renewed attention in 2004 when Mel Gibson used it as the basis for his film The Passion of the Christ. Today marks the death of Clemens Brentano, the German poet and novelist who transcribed Catherine’s accounts of what she experienced. The following is taken from Wikipedia:

In 1818, weary of his somewhat restless and unsettled life, he returned to the practice of the Catholic faith and withdrew to the monastery of Dülmen, where he lived for some years in strict seclusion. He took on there the position of secretary to the Catholic visionary nun, the Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, of whom it was said that, during the last 12 years of her life, she could eat no food except Holy Communion, nor take any drink except water, subsisting entirely on the Holy Eucharist. It was claimed that from 1802 until her death, she bore the wounds of the Crown of Thorns, and from 1812, the full stigmata, including a cross over her heart and the wound from the lance. Clemens Brentano made her acquaintance, was converted to the strong faith, and remained at the foot of the stigmatist’s bed copying her dictation without embellishment… When she died, he prepared an index of the visions and revelations from her journal, The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (published 1833).