Author

Pierre of Cambrai; Geel tradition

Posthumous or imagined likeness of St. Dymphna.
Posthumous or imagined likeness of St. Dymphna. Source · Public domain
St. Dymphna and the Geel Colony

c. 1247; Geel colony tradition from the Middle Ages · Medieval · Hagiography

St. Dymphna and the Geel Colony is less a single book than a layered dossier: a thirteenth-century Latin Vita by Pierre of Cambrai, a medieval shrine in the Brabant town of Geel, and a centuries-long practice of boarding mentally ill people with local families.