Where Does The Passion Get Its Ideas?

Anna Katharina Emmerich's The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ has been added to the Project Gutenberg databases. This record of Emmerich's ecstatic visions has been cited in several press accounts as source material for Mel Gibson's screenplay for The Passion of Christ, which raises concerns among many for the extent to which she blames the Jews for the crucifixion. That is to say, she describes events not depicted in the gospels, all of which, purely coincidentally no doubt, seem to make the Jews look guiltier.

Gibson isn't the only prominent conservative Catholic with an interest in women who believe they were granted visions of the Passion. In Nearer, My God, William F. Buckley devoted an entire chapter to Maria Valtorta and her Poem of the Man-God. (Excerpts only; for much discussion of Valtorta, go here.)