Book Two - Chapter 1

Of a girl deaf and dumb, blind and crippled.

IN the year 1148 from the Incarnation of our Lord, and 12 from the death of Henry the First, king of the English, when the sun's golden orbit had brought back to us the much-desired joys of festal celebration with a new festival of the blessed apostle, new miracles shone forth. Sick men, oppressed with divers diseases, lay prostrate in the church -- while the lamps glowed redly on all sides -- beseeching the divine clemency and praying for the presence of the blessed Bartholomew. Nor, in truth, was the mercy of God far from them, who is always present at the prayer of those that devoutly ask Him. For one man rejoices with a cry of jubilation that he has received remedy of his aching head, another the restoration of his lost walking powers. Here a man rejoices free from ringing in the ears, there one from ulceration of the limbs; here one who has lost soreness of his eyes and received clearness of vision; many rejoice that they are soothed from the distress of fevers, and thunder praises to the honour and glory of the apostle.

While on every side there was given by all the people applause for such things, far off, in the left end of the church, there was heard by certain persons weeping and wailing, where lay a girl deaf and dumb and deprived of the light of both eyes, and crippled with legs bent backward, whose weeping parents lay clinging to the pavement and ceased not from prayer until the clerk should finish all things which were rightly expedient at so great a festival. So it pleased the Divine Goodness to condescend to their petition and that His creature should not longer be vexed by power of evil, but should be fully and perfectly delivered from every bond of sickness. When, therefore, the canons were chanting the second vespers, the maiden began to be tortured more grievously and to be vexed more hardly than she was wont, foaming at the mouth, smiting her breast, dashing her head upon the ground, but when they came to the hymn of Mary the Most Blessed Mother of God, at the incensing of the altars, the aforesaid girl began to cry with a shrill voice and to stretch her limbs with a supreme effort. And soon thankfully leaping forth, and wiping her eyes, now new and clear, with the linen cloth with which she was clad, with firm step and repaired hearing, and with the pleasure of sight restored, she ran to the table of the holy altar, stretching out both hands to the stars. So she, who a little before had been deaf and dumb, now joyfully called aloud in praise of God, and assured her parents, as they wept copiously for joy, that she was free of all her sickness.

The Book of the Foundation of St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield Rendered into Modern English from the original Latin version preserved in the British Museum, numbered Vespasian B. IX, by Mr. Humphrey H. King and Mr. William Barnard for use in the Records of St. Bartholomew's Priory by E.A. Webb.

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