Three Thousand Years of Mental HealingCutten, George Barton
History
Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing
Cutten, George Barton
Mental healing
"On the 6th of September, 1303, Roger, aged two years
and three months, the son of Gervase, one of the warders
of Conway Castle, managed to crawl out of bed in the
night and tumble off a bridge, a distance of
twenty-eight feet; he was not discovered till the next
morning, when his mother found him half naked and quite
dead upon a hard stone at the bottom of the ditch, where
there was no water or earth, but simply the rock, which
had been quarried to build the castle. Simon Waterford,
the vicar, who had christened the child, John de Bois,
John Guffe, all sworn witnesses, took their oaths on the
Gospel that they saw and handled the child dead. The
King's Crowners (Stephen Ganny and William Nottingham)
were presently called and went down into the moat. They
found the child's body cold and stiff, and white with
hoar-frost, stark dead, indeed. While the Crowners, as
their office requires, began to write what they had
seen, one John Syward, a near neighbour, came down and
gently handled the child's body all over, and finding it
as dead as ever any, made the sign of the cross upon its
forehead, and earnestly prayed after this manner:
'Blessed St. Thomas Cantelope, you by whom God has
wrought innumerable miracles, show mercy unto this
little infant, and obtain he may return to life again.
If this grace be granted he shall visit your holy
sepulchre and render humble thanks to God and you for
the favor.' No sooner had Syward spoken these words,
than the child began to move his head and right arm a
little, and forthwith life and vigor came back again
into every part of his body. The Crowners, and many
others who were standing by, saw the miracle, and in
that very place, with great admiration, returned humble
thanks to God and St. Thomas for what they had seen. The
mother, now overjoyed, took the child in her arms, and
went that day to hear mass in a church not far off,
where, upon her knees, she recognized with a grateful
heart that she owed the life of her infant to God and
St. Thomas. Her devotion ended, she returned home, and
the child, feeling no pain at all, walked as he was wont
to do up and down the house, though a little scar still
continued in one cheek, which after a few days, quite
vanished away."[66]
St. Catharine of Siena (1347-1380) obtained considerable reputation as
a healer, principally, however, in the line of exorcism; this, though,
meant the cure of any disease. Like St. Paul, she was one of a large
number of saints who healed others but did not cure herself; she died
at the age of thirty-three. A woman was presented to the immaculate
saintess for prompt remedy; by the virtue of divine magic a demon was
forced from each part of her body where he had taken refuge, but
resisting absolute ejectment from this carnal abode, made a desperate
conflict in the throat, where by uninterrupted scratches he reproduced
himself in the form of an abscess.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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