Saint Dymphna

Virgin and Martyr

Feast Day

May 15

Life

d. 620

Born

Ireland

According to the medieval Vita preserved in the abbey of Cambron and given canonical recognition by the bishops of Cambrai in the thirteenth century, Dymphna was the daughter of a pagan Irish king of the early seventh century. After the death of her Christian mother, her father, seized by a grief that turned to derangement, demanded that Dymphna marry him in her mother's place. She fled with her confessor, the priest Gerebernus, across the sea to Antwerp and finally to the village of Gheel in Brabant.

The king tracked them down. When Dymphna, then about fifteen years old, refused to return with him, he ordered his men to behead the priest and, when they hesitated to touch the king's daughter, struck off her head himself. The two were buried where they had died.

From the early Middle Ages onward, miraculous cures of mental illness were reported at Dymphna's tomb. Gheel became the most important medieval centre for the care of the mentally ill in Europe, with townspeople taking patients into their own homes — a practice of family-based care that has continued for more than seven centuries and remains in operation today. The Sint-Dimpnakerk in Geel houses her relics.