St. Francis of Assisi and St. Catherine of Siena are two saints famous for having received the stigmata, that is the wounds of the Crucified Christ on their own bodies. That was a subject much-desired in the High Middle Ages. But is it possible that St. Bernard's (legendary) amplexus was a stop along the iconographic road that led to the stigmata? Consider the following images of Francis and and then, a modern image of Bernard, whose legendary reception of the Crucified's embrace would have pre-dated Francis.

Adelheid Krah has been working on this treasure trove of administrative records now in Munich and mostly online. Using these sources, she published a monograph about women in the Diocese of Freising, who played a multifaceted role in shaping the region's cultural landscape. Of course, the records also shed new light on the Cistercian monk-bishop-crusader Otto of Freising (1111–1158). According to Krah, theses records reveal a predominantly feminine society which spanned centuries.

Jamie St. Clair Collings (Centre for Medieval Studies, U of Toronto) presented a paper in Kalamazoo 2026 on "Tiles and the Role of Geometricity in Later 12th- and 13th-c. Cistercian Spiritual Practice." These examples of Cistercian craftsmanship have often been neglected because they are difficult to find. Most abbeys (whether ruins or vibrant communities) don't have these floors in their churches. The tile designs show simple geometrical forms in the tradition of grisaille windows and the geometrically decorated manuscripts we consider to be classically Cistercian. The strictness was used to avoid curiositas. Abbeys had their own quarries and kilns. Collings stated that is was remarkable that the first regulation of tiles by the General Chapter took place as late as 1218.

This capital from Zwettl Abbey ist relatively festive for early Cistercian examples, many are even more sleek and show only one leaf-like form. They are worth looking at closely, since they often reveal that typical Cistercian finesse. All the more interesting the contrast to this Romantic example from Banja Luka Abbey in in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  

First off, text almost never appears in medieval Cistercian capitals, nor do such figural representations. 

Daniel S. Berman (a student at the Graduate Center, CUNY) spoke about this image as one point in his 2026 Kalamazoo paper titled "Fragrance Sweeter than Wine: Sensorial Devotion to Christ’s Side-wound in a Fourteenth-century Cistercian Miscellany." He explained the representation of the dulce vulnus with the text wrapped around it. The Cistercian nuns praying with this manuscript looked at the life-sized image in the course of their spiritual exercises. They even documented medicinal healing which resulted from Sacred Heart devotions. The image is from the "Villers Miscellany" (KBR MS 4459–70, Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels). It was written by various scribes at the monastery of Villers, but was probably used by the nuns at Vrouwenpark.
There are a few articles on this striking image, most notably: Sara Ritchey, "The Wound's Presence and Bodily Absence: Activating the Spiritual Senses in a Fourteenth-Century Manuscript," Sensory Reflections. Traces of Experience in Medieval Artifacts, edt. Fiona Griffiths and Kathryn Starkey, (De Gruyter, 2019) 163-180.