Songfacts®:

• A track from the first Bauhaus album, "Stigmata Martyr" describes the crucifixion on Jesus; the stigmata are the marks in his head, hands and feet.
  
  According to lead singer Peter Murphy, the song is note a swipe at Christianity or any other religion. He explained in the Village Voice: "The message is, really, the dangers of obsession, of almost psychosomatic induction of that masochism. That alone can be an illusion. And it's way off the mark as to the actual source of the message of any religious God. God doesn't want you to be in pain and die. It wasn't anti-religious. It wasn't demonic. It was alluding to the manifestation. Is it truly a mark of the Holy Ghost or is it simply an obsession condition? That's all there is to it."
• After Bauhaus split up in 1983, Peter Murphy became a Muslim (he was raised Catholic). When the band got back together for a 1998 tour, he vetoed this song from the setlist. He told the Village Voice: "I don't think the other members of the band really got what I was writing about, and the collective intention suddenly became very anti-religious."
• The song gets pretty intense at the end, when Murphy repeats "in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti" as we hear screams evoking the crucifixion. This translates to "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," which is said in Catholic mass when making the sign of the cross.
• This appears in the 1988 horror movie Night of the Demons in a scene where a girl is overcome by demons and develops a taste for blood.