Vita Wenceslai (Legenda Gumpoldi)
Healing at the Tomb
A woman congenitally blind and with twisted hands is fully restored through her persistent prayers at the tomb of blessed Wenceslas on his feast day.
In that same city where the holy body rests, a woman is said to have lived there who was blind, her hands bent backward and twisted from birth, denied the use of her hands that nature grants to everyone.1 She, on the feast day that comes around each year, entered the church of Saint Vitus the martyr and, before the tomb of blessed Wenceslas, to which she had been drawn by her longing, prostrate and praying, persisted in pleading with her prayers for as long as it took until, before the eyes of everyone watching, through the merits of the holy man her sight was restored and her hands were made whole again, safely restored to use.2
Read the original Latin
Mansisse fertur eadem civitate, qua sanctum requiescit corpus, mulier quaedam visu orbata, manuum recurva inflexione ab ipso iam ortu contracta, omni usu manibus per naturam concesso privata. Quae videlicet, reverso per annum die festivo, aecclesiam sancti Viti martiris ingressa, et ante sepulcrum beati Vencezlavi, quo desideravit ducta, orans prostrata, tamdiu precibus lugendo perseverat, quoad cunctis cernentibus sancti viri meritis visu inluminatur et manuum salva restitucione instauratur.
Notes
- 1 ↩sanctum corpus likely refers to the relic-body of St. Wenceslas; the city is probably Prague. The ablative absolute concesso ... usu is rendered as a relative clause for natural English flow.
- 2 ↩The ablative absolute reverso ... die festivo ('the festive day having returned') is rendered as a temporal clause. visu inluminatur is taken as 'her sight was restored' (lit. 'is illuminated') in the sense of regaining sight. manuum salva restitucione instauratur is rendered 'her hands were made whole again, safely restored to use' — the Latin plays on restitutio/instauro for emphasis.
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