of these phenomena were reported by Pio himself in letters written to his spiritual directors, while others have been reported by his followers. Stigmata Pio wrote in his letters that, early in his priesthood, he experienced bodily marks, pain, and bleeding in locations indicative of the (not yet visible) stigmata. In a letter to his spiritual companion and confessor Father Agostino Gemelli, dated March 21, 1912, Pio wrote of his devotion to the mystical body of Christ and the intuition that he would bear the stigmata. Luzzatto claims that in this letter Pio uses unrecognized passages from a book by the stigmatized mystic Gemma Galgani. Pio subsequently denied that he knew of or owned the cited book. In a 1915 letter, Agostino asked Pio specific questions, including: when did he first experience visions, whether he was stigmatic, and whether he felt the pains of the Passion of Christ, namely the crowning of thorns and the scourging. Pio replied that he had had visions since his novitiate period (1903 to 1904), and that he was stigmatic, adding that he had been so terrified by the phenomenon that he begged God to withdraw his stigmata. He also wrote that he did not wish the pain to be removed, only the visible wounds, since he considered them to be an indescribable and almost unbearable humiliation. On 20 September 1918, while hearing confessions, Pio said to have had a reappearance of the physical occurrence of the stigmata. His stigmatism was reported to have continued for fifty years, until the end of his life. The blood flowing from the stigmata purportedly smelled of perfume or flowers. Pio conveyed to Agostino that the pain remained and was more acute on specific days and under certain circumstances. Though he said he would have preferred to suffer in secret, by early 1919, news that he was a stigmatic had begun to spread. Pio often wore red mittens or black coverings on his hands and feet, saying that he was embarrassed by the marks. Agostino Gemelli claimed that the wounds were consistent with those that soldiers had inflicted on themselves "by the use of a caustic substance". while Amico Bignami considered that Pio's wounds might be a skin necrosis that was hindered from healing through the use of iodine tincture or similar chemicals. Once made public, the wounds were studied by a number of physicians, some hired by the