Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 1.djvu/388

374 374 B. HELEN the tomb and well of St. Helen, or Lene. Pilgrimages are made to the place every summer, and cripples and blind or sick persons come there to be cared. They remain all night at the grave, and take away with them little bags of earth from nnder the tombstone, and when they g(t, they make offerings in gratitude for their cures. Those who have come on crutches and have been cured, plant the crutches in the earth, and crosses are seen stuck about and hung with articles of clothing in memory of benefits received by the intercession of the saint. Three distinct legends are told to account for her cure-working well and tomb there. The first says she is St. Helen of Skufde, and that when she was killed in Sweden, she floated on a great stone to the opposite coast of Zealand. The. cliffs were so steep that the stone and the corpse could not have come ashore had not the rocks split to allow the holy burden to pass. The body was carried towards Tiisvilde. On the spot where she was first laid down, a spring of water gushed from the ground, and the saint became so heavy that horses could not draw her any farther ; so she was buried there. Close to the shore lies the stone on which she floated, and on it may be seen the marks of her hair, hands, and feet, and the rift in the rock is plainly visible. The second legend is, that St. Helen was a princess of Skania, in Sweden, famed for her beauty and modesty. A king fell in love with her, and as his attentions were not altogether respectful, she fled across the country until she came to cliffs high over the sea. As he was nearly overtaking her, she threw herself into the sea, whereupon a large stone arose from the deep and received her, and on this she sailed to Skselland (Zealand), and where she first set foot a fountain sprang up. She lived long in that country, and was revered as a saint. The fountain is called by her name to this day, "Helen's Kild." Thiele says that Helen possibly means HeUe Lene^ « The Holy Lena." The third legend is this. Three holy sisters went to sea together. Their boat upset, and they were drowned. The sea carried them to different places: Helen to Tiisvilde, in Zealand; Karen, %,f. Catherine, to St. Karen's spring; and the third to another place ; and where each landed, a fouiitain arose from the earth. J. M. Thiele, Danske FoOcsagn, Compare with St. Helen (11). B. Helen (13), or Elena of Padna, Nov. 4. + 1230 or 1242. O.S.F. She was of the noble family of the EnselminL At the age of twelve she took the veil in the Clarissan convent of Sta. Maria di Arcella, outside the walls of Padua. She bore with exemplary patience a long illness which deprived her of the power of speech and the use of her limbs and eyes. Her sufferings were increased by the efforts of her friends to cure her. She could hear and could make herself understood by those who attended her. The superiors commanded her to tell these sisters her bodily and spiritual experiences, and had it all written down. She was canonized by Linocent XII. in 1G05. She is spoken of as ** Blessed" by Lam'bertini (after- wards Benedict XIY.), in his book on canonization. ^.E.itf., "Romano-Seraphic Mart." Biographies of her were written by her countrymen, Scordoneo and Porti- nario. Chron, Seraphica, ii. fol. 97, col. 1. Francis van Ortroy, in AA.SS.9 g^v^* an account of her life and visions, with notes * B. Helen (14), of Hungary, O.S.D., Nov. 8, Aug. 18, March 16. 13th century. Governess of B. Maboaret of Hungary. Bepresented with a crucifix in her right hand and in the left a city. She encouraged Margaret to wear a hair shirt occasionally at the' age of five that she might get used to penance, and that it might keep her from self-in- dulgence. She had a great devotion to the sufferings of Christ, and He rewarded her with ihe stigmata. Once, on the festival of St Francis, while she prayed, God wounded her with His wounds in the right hand, she opposing it, and crying out, "Lord, do not do this." She received the wound in the left hand at midday on St. Peter and St. Paul's day. The wounds did not bleed, but the marks and the pain were there, and the