This book is the first in-depth study of the changing perceptions and representations of supernatural bodies in modern Britain and Ireland. It focuses on a phenomenon that became the center of intense public debate between 1840 and 1940: stigmata. An Irish journalist in 1874 asked why the wounds of the crucified Christ in mortal bodies couldn't be "discussed calmly… without resorting to stormy rhetoric." Supernatural Bodies takes this question seriously. It draws from previously uncharted archival resources to place supernatural bodies at the heart of long-standing discussions about the presence of Roman Catholicism in society, the supernatural in modern Christianity and society, the authority of sciences, as well as the relationship between Britain and Ireland and between Britain and the Continent. Through the lens of the controversies surrounding stigmata, this book shows how these discussions could converge around supernatural bodies.