Saint Damhnait of Geel
The fifteenth of May is the feast-day in the Orthodox Church of Saint Damhnait, a beautiful young woman who was murdered by her own father after fleeing to Belgium. This seventh-century virgin-martyr remains the patroness of the mentally ill, those suffering from depression and anxiety, and victims of incest and domestic abuse. A quick note on the saint’s name: the Greeks make an understandable mistake (as on this icon) with regard to the etymology, which is a mistake nonetheless. It is not, as they imagine, a local distortion of the mythology-derived Greek name Daphnē ‘laurel’, but is instead derived from the Gælic word damh ‘poet’ and the diminutive feminine suffix -ait. Though perhaps, on second thought, not so much a mistake as all that? We do, after all, call them ‘poet laureates’ for a reason.
Damhnait [more commonly in English Dymphna, but also erroneously Daphne as mentioned above] was born to a heathen king of Oriel named Damon, and his Christian wife, who was remarkably beautiful. Their daughter, whom her mother had secretly baptised as a Christian, grew up in her very image, and at the age of fourteen she conceived a desire to consecrate herself to God and to live as an anchoress. She got her wish, but shortly thereafter her mother fell ill and died.
Damon grieved greatly, and fell into a deep depression as a result of his wife’s death. His mental health deteriorated to such a degree that his chief advisers and stewards began to advise him to remarry. But he vowed he would touch no woman unless she was his former wife’s equal in beauty. This vow of his took a perverse turn, as after several years passed and no such woman was found in Ireland. The depressed king conceived an unlawful lust for his daughter, who very much resembled the wife that he had lost.
Damhnait, seeing and understanding this, resolved to preserve herself and her father by fleeing Ireland. She set off with her priest Gerebern, the court fool and two servants, and took a ship for the Continent. They eventually settled in the city of Geel, now in Belgium. (In the seventh century, Geel would probably have been under Frankish rule.) There they took shelter near a shrine that was dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours. Saint Damhnait had the idea to set up there a hospice, by which she might care for the poor, sick and needy of the village and its surrounding countryside. For the few months that she lived there basically as a political refugee, Damhnait gained a reputation for selfless charity toward people worse off than she was.
Saint Damhnait spent much of her wealth in building and maintaining this hospice, and some of the Irish coin that she spent found its way back to Oriel in trade. When her father began making inquiries about how traders from the Continent had gotten such coin into their possession, it didn’t take him long to deduce where his daughter had gone. He sent agents back along the trade route the merchants used with the same coins Saint Damhnait had used. When they showed these to an innkeeper near Geel, the man – innocent of their true intentions – told them openly of the beautiful young anchoress and her hospital. The spies brought this word back to Damon, who himself struck out and sailed for Geel, at the head of a band of armed men.
Damon came upon the hospital and at once found Gerebern and Damhnait. He ordered his men to slay Gerebern on the spot, and thus the poor Irish priest was martyred. He then tried to force Damhnait to return with him to Oriel, but she steadfastly refused. Roused to rage, the father ordered his daughter’s death. But Damon’s men dared not raise their blades against Damhnait. In pique, Damon drew his own blade and struck his daughter on the neck, severing her head. This happened on the fifteenth of May, around the year 650.
The local villagers came and found the bodies of the two martyrs Gerebern and Damhnait, coffined them decently and interred them in a cave. Later, the relics of these two saints were translated. Damhnait’s relics were moved into a silver reliquary at the church in Geel now named for her, and an active cultus of Damhnait arose in the fourteenth century around these relics, as they were visited in particular by pilgrims suffering from mental illness. Inspired by her Vita, the residents of Geel began taking people with mental problems into their homes as boarders and guests, a form of local Christian hospitality that has existed in an almost-unchanged form for nearly seven hundred years. As a model for treatment, it seems to work wonders, in part because it reduces the stigma on mental health issues and preserves the dignity and self-worth of the guests – whom the residents of Geel take care to treat on equal terms with themselves. The witness and charity of Saint Damhnait is still very much active there, and the approach that she has inspired to dealing with mental health issues deserves to be emulated elsewhere. Holy martyr Damhnait, swift and faithful advocate for the troubled in mind, intercede with Christ our God on behalf of us sinners!
Maddened by lust, the ungodly king raged mindlessly
When his abominable desires were steadfastly refused;
And, rebuked, he hewed down Gerebern the pious priest,
And likewise slew the holy Damhnait his daughter,
Who willingly died to preserve her virginity.
Wherefore, those who are deranged and deluded in mind
Find in her a steadfast advocate and a wellspring of wondrous healing!
Sint-Dimpnakirk, Geel, Belgium
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