The insults and blindness persisted for nine years, through Dimpna’s childhood. But in the summer of 1642, when she was thirteen, there came talk of a new miracle-working shrine at an oak in the woods, just beyond Tervuren. Like any responsible Catholic parent of her time, Dimpna’s mother had surely tried assorted physical remedies, and when those failed she had at least considered taking Dimpna to one of the dozens of shrines that dotted the region, including the medieval shrine to Our Dear Lady of the Lovely Fragrance, just two miles beyond the Jesus Oak, in the same woods. But it was the
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