The Miracle Working Healing Spring
Healing with water – drinking, washing, bathing or sprinkling – is a well-known method already in Antiquity: often the sacred places of Asclepius were nearby springs, considered curative. This tradition is preserved through the Middle Ages and Modernity up to the very present day. Water healing being still actual, springs are now devoted to various saints and stories are told explaining the origins of that devotion or presenting numerous real cases of the spring’s curative effect. In Christian art there is an iconographic scene which visually explains the miraculous power of water: The Virgin Zoodochos Pighi (also: The Virgin Life-Giving Sourceor The Virgin Spring of Life). Depicted in the center of the spring, Virgin Mary sanctifies the water and gives it the miraculous power to heal various diseases: blindness or immobility, but also insanity.
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