Wednesday 23 March 2016

Saint Patrick Heals His Sister Lupita

As we have already seen, Jocelin's Life of Saint Patrick supplies our patron with a trio of sisters and goes on to name their offspring as his willing cooperators in the mission to Ireland. Jocelin features one of the sisters, Lupita, in the earlier section of the Life dealing with Patrick's childhood, where he presents the pair as having been raised together in the home of their maternal aunt:
And Patrick, the child of the Lord, was then nursed in the town of Empthor, in the house of his mother's sister, with his own sister Lupita. (Chapter IV, p.138)
Lupita then features in her own miracle story in Chapter VI when she suffers a bad fall. Although other family and friends rush to offer assistance, needless to say there is really only one person able to heal her - her brother Patrick:

 How the Sister of St. Patrick was healed. 
 ON a certain day the sister of Saint Patrick, the aforementioned Lupita, being then of good stature, had run about the field, at the command of her aunt, to separate the lambs from the ewes, for it was then weaning time, when her foot slipped, and she fell down and smote her head against a sharp flint, and her forehead was struck with a grievous wound, and she lay even as dead; and many of the household ran up, and her kindred and her friends gathered together to comfort the maiden wounded and afflicted; and her brother came with the rest, compassionating his sister, but confiding in the divine medicine; for, drawing near, he raised her, and, touching with his spittle the thumb of his right hand, he imprinted on her forehead, stained with blood, the sign of the cross, and forthwith he healed her; yet the scar of the wound remained as a sign, I think, of the miracle that was performed, and a proof of the holiness of him who, by his faith in the cross of Christ, had done this thing. (Chapter VI, p.141)

Tomorrow I will look a bit more at the figure of the aunt in Jocelin's Life of Patrick.


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