Pope Benedict XVI advocated the cause for sainthood of this uncommon nun

USA (SANEPR.com) April 14, 2008 -- In the 100-page introduction to a new edition of a religious classic, “The Dolorous Passion,” Atlanta author and historian Noel Griese writes about a nun whose piety touched Pope Benedict XVI, and relates how Mel Gibson used the account of her visions to script more than 40 scenes in his "Passion of the Christ" movie.
The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ is an 1833 work in which German author Clemens Brentano related the visions of the 19th-century nun, Anne Catherine Emmerich, regarding the Last Supper, Passion, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
"Had Mel Gibson relied solely on the accounts in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the Acts of the Apostles, he would perhaps have had only two or three minutes of film," said Griese. "The visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich gave him many of the details that permitted him to create what is perhaps the most dramatic Passion Play yet produced."
Griese's introduction to the new edition of "The Dolorous Passion" links more than 40 scenes in the Gibson movie to the 19th-century German classic.
"People who saw the movie will recall Judas hanging himself over the carcass of a flyblown dead animal," Griese notes. "In the New Testament, only the Gospel of Matthew says Judas hanged himself, and it does not describe the locale. In Acts of the Apostles, a continuation of the Gospel of Luke, Judas is said to have met his end not by hanging but when his insides burst out. Gibson takes his cue for Judas hanging himself from Matthew, but his details of the locale are from Emmerich and Brentano."
Another example: one of the thieves crucified with Jesus is named Gesmas in the Gibson movie. The thieves, Griese notes, while not named in the Bible, have variously over time been identified in apocryphal material as Dismas and Cestas, Dumachus and Titus, Joca and Matha and Nismus and Zustin. Only Emmerich and Gibson identify the "bad thief" as Gesmas.
Similarly, the Roman centurion Abenadar in the movie, the “right-hand man” for procurator Pontius Pilate, is an extrabiblical figure drawn straight from "The Dolorous Passion." Griese, a student of religious mysticism and the author of 17 books, says of Abenadar, "According to Emmerich, he was converted to Christianity as a result of his presence at the crucifixion. She says he took the Christian name Ctesiphon, and became an evangelist."
Emmerich and Gibson place Abenadar at the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate, the scourging and crucifixion. There is a historical record of a first-century Ctesiphon, Griese says. "This Ctesiphon accompanied the apostle James the Greater into Spain, where he helped to evangelize the Spanish at Verga. After James was martyred in Jerusalem, Ctesiphon is said to have taken his body back to Spain."
To write The Dolorous Passion, Clemens Brentano sat beside the sickbed of ailing nun Emmerich daily from 1818 forward, recording the visions she experienced up to her death in 1824.
Prior to his 2005 election as Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, one of the most scholarly of the members of the College of Cardinals, advocated Emmerich’s cause for sainthood in his capacity as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, an office to which he was appointed by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.
Brentano, a friend of Germany's greatest author, Johann Goethe, and of the Brothers Grimm of fairy tale fame, was a well educated author of poetry and plays who first gained fame as a collector and editor of German folk songs. Emmerich, whose visions he recorded, was a nun whose convent was closed in 1811 by Napoleon Bonaparte's brother Jerome Bonaparte, the king of Westphalia.
Brentano worked on his notes for nine years after Emmerich died in 1824 before publishing them as The Dolorous Passion. The book soon outsold even Goethe in Germany and became an international best-seller. However, it was all but forgotten until Gibson resurrected it to script his Passion movie.
The book is available in both cloth and paperback from Anvil Publishers and from local bookstores, amazon.com, b&N.com, Ingram and Baker & Taylor.