Why was Saint Dymphna canonized?

Answer 1

In the Middle Ages, saints were canonized in a way that was different from the way canonization is done in more recent times. In more modern times, a specially appointed team of investigators gathers biographical information on the person who is under consideration, and secures the testimony of witnesses who knew them and can testify to their holiness of life. Allegedly miraculous occurrences are carefully studied. Hearings are held with an attorney arguing in favor of the canonization, and his opponent, a special prosecutor called "The Devil's Advocate," arguing against it. In the twelfth century, where we find the earliest written records about the popular veneration of Saint Dymphna, the canonization process described above had not yet been developed. Instead, what often happened was that the local population would go to the bishop and ask that a recently deceased person be declared a saint. In many of the towns, villages and hamlets in Medieval Europe, everybody pretty much knew everybody, as we do in small towns today. People lived out-of-doors a lot; they tended not to be off by themselves, but worked and spent most of their free time with others, and they entertained each other with stories, songs, tales, ballads, and just plain gossip. They lived in that way because there was no radio, no TV, no movies, CDs, computers, phones, air-conditioning, or central heating, or electric lights. So people really were involved in each others' lives a lot more than we are in modern times. If the great majority of the people in a district proclaimed one of their own "a saint", the Church tended to listen. Such was the case with the saint called Dymphna. There is no record of the process of her canonization at Rome. We only know from a hagiography (a saint's biography) that Pierre, a canon of the church of Saint Aubert at Cambrai, wrote sometime near the middle of the 13th century, that a church dedicated to God in honor of Saint Dymphna had been built many years before at Gheel in Belgium. The details of her life and martyrdom, unfortunately, have not proven to be plentiful or reliable when scrutinized by modern methods. Nevertheless, the story goes as follows: that Saint Dymphna was an young Irish Christian; her father was a pagan chieftan. After the death of her mother, Dymphna's father wanted to marry her. When she refused, her father threatened her with death unless she complied. Saint Dymphna fled to Belgium. Her father pursued her there and martyred her at Gheel, where she has been revered ever since. She is revered for her heroic choice to keep herself free from the evil that another desired to inflict on her. Not everyone has the courage to choose death rather than sin or dishonor, but those who do, the Church honors in a special way.