As we have seen in this post, the German mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich “saw”, in her visions, several Biblical people with red hair, namely Adam, Eve and their children, Job, Moses, the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist.
I found out that another German mystic saw Biblical people with red hair: Therese Neumann.
She was born in the village of Konnersreuth, Bavaria, in 1898. In 1918, she was partially paralyzed after falling off a stool and one year later she claimed to have been blinded completely. Therese reported that her eyesight was restored on 29 April 1923—the day Therese of Lisieux was beatified in Rome.
Therese would later apparently develop the stigmata, starting on 5 March 1926, the first Friday of Lent. On Good Friday, Neumann witnessed the entire Passion of Christ in her visions. She displayed wounds on her hands and feet accompanied by blood coming from her eyes. On Easter Sunday, she claimed a vision of the resurrection of Christ. For several consecutive Fridays after that, she stated she was experiencing the Passion of Christ, apparently suffering in her own body along with all his historic agonies. She claimed to have especially suffered the Passion on Good Friday each year.
From 1923 until her death in 1962, Therese Neumann professed to have consumed no food other than the Holy Eucharist nor to have drunk any water from 1926 until her death.
It was claimed that during some of her Friday trances, she would utter phrases identified by witnesses as ancient Aramaic. She was also said to have been able to understand Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.
During the Third Reich, Therese Neumann was the target of ridicule and defamation, as the Nazis knew about her dissenting views and feared her growing popularity. She was observed by the Gestapo. She was never physically harmed, though her family home, parish church and priest's house all received direct attacks.
Paramahansa Yogananda visited her and wrote about her case in his book Autobiography of a Yogi, published in 1946. He wrote an entire chapter, "Therese Neumann, The Catholic Stigmatist of Bavaria", which reverently gives a vivid first-hand description of one of her Friday Passion trances.
The Roman Catholic Church has neither confirmed nor denied the inedia (from which she suffered according to her critics), nor her stigmata. However, in 1928 the Italian physician and psychologist Father Agostino Gemelli went to Konnersreuth, as a doctor and commissioner of Pope Pius XI, to meet the mystic. After having visited her, he declared: "Having visited Teresa Neumann with the greatest attention, I declare that there is absolutely no trace of hysteria and, naturally, that her condition is not scientifically explainable."
In 2005, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Bishop of Regensburg, formally opened the Vatican proceedings for her beatification and she is now considered a Servant of God.
In this Italian pdf, on page 8, we have the account of the Last Supper and Passion as seen by Therese. She says that, after the blessing of bread and wine, Jesus gives each one a piece of bread. Then he says something that makes “the one with red hair” stand up and go away hastily. This is, of course, Judas.
On page 32, we can read about the meeting between the German painter Friedrich von Rieger and Therese. In 1934, von Rieger went to Eichstàtt to make the portrait of His Excellency Conrad von Preysing and the Abbess Benedikta von Spiegel. On that occasion, while the abbess was sitting for the portrait, he had the chance to talk to Therese and among other things he asked what the physical appearance of Jesus was. She replied "About the same as you, not taller. His beard and hair are copper, his beard is not thick and his chin is like yours. His voice is baritone."
On the contrary, Anne Catherine Emmerich claimed Jesus had “golden hair”.
It would be interesting to see if other mystics have also described Jesus or other Biblical people as having red hair.
