The paper aims to show how the analysis of the figurative component of texts can contribute to the study of religious discourse. In particular, extending the more traditional iconographic analysis, we will use the concept of thematic recategorization (proposed by Louis Panier and Algirdas J. Greimas) to study how the stigmata have been reinterpreted over time, in the transition from the biblical figure to the bodily wounds of stigmatics. As is known, the stigmata are the five wounds on the hands, feet and side of Jesus Christ, caused by the traumas suffered during the Passion and reproduced on the bodies of some mystics. From medieval ascetics, to Saint Francis of Assisi, and more recently Padre Pio, the phenomena of stigmatization have occurred, as regards the relation of the figures with their thematic basis, to a double thematic recategorization: from a physical sign which, in the Gospels, figurativises the theme of the “suffering” that Christ had to undergo during the Passion for the salvation of humanity, the stigmata first become a figure of the imitation of Christ which thematise the “participation” of the mystic in this suffering, and finally a figurative representation of the “identification” of the Saint with Jesus Christ.