The Dropsical Goditha of Hayes
Set of 3 panels from Window nIII
These three panels tell the story of an ill woman called Goditha of Hayes. In the first panel she travels to Canterbury with a female servant, her midriff swollen up enormously. In the third panel she and her companion leave Canterbury, Goditha now slimmed down and healed from her illness (dropsy, a medieval term for extensive swelling). The second panel originally pictured Goditha drinking the blood-and-water relic at Becket’s tomb, but it now has a scene from a different window inserted in its center.
Window: nIII, Panel: 35b
The first panel of Goditha’s story is in excellent condition, containing very few modern replacements. Goditha wears a loose white kerchief around her head, a type of headgear the glaziers gave to ill women. Her body is swollen. She grips the top of a long crutch as she shuffles forward, her servant helping to guide and support her from behind. The women are heading for a city gate.
The inscription reads, Que venit egrota turgescit ydropica tota, or “The ill woman who comes is all swollen with dropsy.”
Window: nIII, Panel: 40
This is one of the most complex panels in the entire Miracle Window sequence. Its inscription is original, reading, Gustat distenta cute fit gustu macile[n]ta: “She tastes with a distended skin, by the act of tasting she becomes thin.” This is clearly the central scene of the miracle of Goditha of Hayes, but apart from the inscription, all that is left of this scene is the hand and staff on the far left of the panel and the lectern or font, with a hand above it, on the far right of the panel.
Window: nIII, Panel: 38a
This is a very heavily restored panel. Only the bottom pieces of Goditha’s dress and cloak and her white shoe are original. The rest of Goditha and all of her servant are made up of Victorian replacement pieces. Most of the city gate, too, has been restored. Enough of the panel remains, though, to be confident it pictured a recovered Goditha and her servant going home after her healing.
Source text
Benedict of Peterborough, Miracles of St Thomas Becket
book III, chapter 69
The swelling of dropsy had possessed the whole of the little body of Goditha of Hayes. All of the beauty of the human form had been removed from all of her limbs. There was no health in her from the sole of her foot to the top of her head. When she arrived at the aforesaid place, a drink of the water of Canterbury was the sole means by which she was drained of fluid. It was as if by tasting the most efficacious draught, a laxative for the stomach had been procured for her. Then she went to Canterbury, the universal and solemn refuge of the wretched. The same laxative persisted through five days, until her limbs were made slender and thin and she left slight and wholly slimmed down.
