A Novena to Saint Dymphna
Patroness of the troubled in mind
What Is Actually Known
The Novena Prayer
O God, we humbly beseech thee, through thy servant Saint Dymphna, who sealed with her blood the love she bore thee, to grant relief to those who suffer from afflictions of the mind and disorders of the nerves, especially those for whom we now pray.
Saint Dymphna, helper of the mentally afflicted, pray for us.
Almost nothing about Dymphna can be established as history. The earliest written life was composed in the thirteenth century by Pierre, a canon of Saint-Aubert at Cambrai, roughly six hundred years after the events it describes, working from oral tradition and from the discovery of two tombs. What follows is that account, held at the distance it deserves.
Clogher
The Novena Prayer
O God, we humbly beseech thee, through thy servant Saint Dymphna, who sealed with her blood the love she bore thee, to grant relief to those who suffer from afflictions of the mind and disorders of the nerves, especially those for whom we now pray.
Saint Dymphna, helper of the mentally afflicted, pray for us.
The account makes Dymphna the daughter of Damon, a pagan chieftain in Ulster, and a Christian mother, and says she was baptized secretly and instructed by a priest named Gerebernus. She is placed in the seventh century.
Her Mother's Death
The Novena Prayer
O God, we humbly beseech thee, through thy servant Saint Dymphna, who sealed with her blood the love she bore thee, to grant relief to those who suffer from afflictions of the mind and disorders of the nerves, especially those for whom we now pray.
Saint Dymphna, helper of the mentally afflicted, pray for us.
Dymphna was about fourteen when her mother died. Her father's grief is described as unbalancing him, and his advisers proposed that he remarry, provided a woman could be found who resembled his wife closely enough.
The Flight
The Novena Prayer
O God, we humbly beseech thee, through thy servant Saint Dymphna, who sealed with her blood the love she bore thee, to grant relief to those who suffer from afflictions of the mind and disorders of the nerves, especially those for whom we now pray.
Saint Dymphna, helper of the mentally afflicted, pray for us.
When no such woman was found and her father turned his attention to his daughter, Dymphna fled the country with Gerebernus and two companions, a court jester and his wife, crossing to the continent and travelling inland.
Gheel
The Novena Prayer
O God, we humbly beseech thee, through thy servant Saint Dymphna, who sealed with her blood the love she bore thee, to grant relief to those who suffer from afflictions of the mind and disorders of the nerves, especially those for whom we now pray.
Saint Dymphna, helper of the mentally afflicted, pray for us.
The party settled at Gheel in Brabant, in what is now Belgium, near a chapel of Saint Martin. The account has Dymphna use what money she had to build a hospice for the poor and the sick of the district.
Traced by Coins
The Novena Prayer
O God, we humbly beseech thee, through thy servant Saint Dymphna, who sealed with her blood the love she bore thee, to grant relief to those who suffer from afflictions of the mind and disorders of the nerves, especially those for whom we now pray.
Saint Dymphna, helper of the mentally afflicted, pray for us.
They were found, according to the account, because the coins they had spent were of a kind traceable to their origin, and the innkeepers who had taken them could say where their owners had gone.
The Refusal
The Novena Prayer
O God, we humbly beseech thee, through thy servant Saint Dymphna, who sealed with her blood the love she bore thee, to grant relief to those who suffer from afflictions of the mind and disorders of the nerves, especially those for whom we now pray.
Saint Dymphna, helper of the mentally afflicted, pray for us.
Gerebernus was killed on her father's order. When Dymphna would not yield to him, her father is said to have beheaded her himself. She was about fifteen.
The Two Tombs
The Novena Prayer
O God, we humbly beseech thee, through thy servant Saint Dymphna, who sealed with her blood the love she bore thee, to grant relief to those who suffer from afflictions of the mind and disorders of the nerves, especially those for whom we now pray.
Saint Dymphna, helper of the mentally afflicted, pray for us.
In the thirteenth century two sarcophagi were found at Gheel, one of them holding a red tile bearing the name Dymphna. Healings of the mentally afflicted began to be reported at the site, and a church was built there that still stands.
Seven Hundred Years at Gheel
The Novena Prayer
O God, we humbly beseech thee, through thy servant Saint Dymphna, who sealed with her blood the love she bore thee, to grant relief to those who suffer from afflictions of the mind and disorders of the nerves, especially those for whom we now pray.
Saint Dymphna, helper of the mentally afflicted, pray for us.
Pilgrims came to Gheel in numbers the church could not house, and the townspeople began taking them into their own homes. That practice has continued for roughly seven hundred years: families in Gheel still board mentally ill people as members of the household, for years or for life, without regarding them as patients. It is among the oldest continuous systems of community psychiatric care in the world, and is studied internationally as a model.
The prayer that opens each day is the traditional novena prayer to Saint Dymphna, of unknown authorship and long in circulation, given here as it is commonly printed. ⚠ Her story is not history in the ordinary sense: the earliest written life was composed in the thirteenth century by Pierre, a canon of Saint-Aubert at Cambrai, some six hundred years after the events, and drawn from oral tradition. The first day says so plainly rather than leaving a reader to discover it. The account involves a father’s incestuous pursuit of his daughter and her murder; it is given here without embellishment and without being made edifying. What follows each day is a fact, one per day.
