Puits Sainte-Renelde in Tubize, Belgium

Atlas Obscura reports on Puits Sainte-Renelde, a well in the Belgian countryside south of the village of Saintes, thirty minutes southwest of Brussels. The well is tied to Saint Renelde, a seventh-century woman who lived on a nearby farm after returning from pilgrimage to the Holy Land. According to legend, on a sweltering day, she struck the ground with her pilgrim's staff and a spring burst forth for her servants. Renelde and those servants were murdered in the late seventh century and later canonized as martyrs. The spring became a pilgrimage site believed to heal stroke, paralysis, eye troubles, and ulcers. In eighteen fifty-one, Father Steen restored the well, raising it seventy centimeters and topping it with a canopy holding a two hundred thirty-three kilogram cast-iron statue. The water remains untested, yet pilgrims still draw it by chain—to drink or anoint themselves—at a site where legend has endured for fourteen centuries.

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