The Valleys of Tirol: Their traditions and customs and how to visit them

‘But Sterzing itself is a place of pilgrimage,’ I said, glad to turn to account my scanty knowledge of the sacred places of the country. ‘Why did you come all this way?’

‘Indeed is Sterzing,’ he replied, ‘a place of benedictions. It is the spot where Sterzing, our first hermit, lived, and left his name to our town. But this is the spot for those who need penance. There, in that place,’ and as I followed the direction of his hand I saw through the low lattice window the lofty elevation of the Thierberg like a phantom tower, enveloped in mist, standing out against the clear sky beyond, and wondered how his palsied limbs had carried him up the steep. ‘In that place, in olden time, lived a true penitent. Once it was a lordly castle, and he to whom it belonged was a rich and honoured knight; but on one occasion he forgot his knightly honour, and with false vows led astray an unthinking maiden of the village. Soon, however, the conviction of his sin came back to him clear as the sun’s light, and without an hour’s hesitation he put it from him. To the girl he made the best amends he could by first leading her to repentance, then procuring her admission to a neighbouring convent. But for him, from that day the lordly castle became as a hermit’s cell, the sound of mirth and revelry and of friendly voices was hushed for ever. The memory of his own name even he would have wiped out, and would have men call him only, as they do to the present day, ‘der Büsser’ – the Penitent. And so many has his example brought to this shrine in a spirit of compunction, that the Church has endowed it with the indulgence of the Portiuncula.’

What a picture of Tirolese faith it was! Instead of setting in motion the detective police, or the telegraph-wire, or the second column of the ‘Times,’ this old man had come many miles in the opposite direction from that his child was supposed to have taken, to bring his burden and lay it before a shrine he believed to have been made dear to heaven by tears of penance in another age, and there commend his petition to God that He might bring it to pass, accepting the suffering as a merited chastisement in a spirit of sincere penitence!

He was feeling better, and I rose to go. He pressed my hand in acknowledgment of my sympathy, and I assured him of it. It was not a case for more substantial charity; I had gathered from his recital that he had no lack of worldly means. I only strove at parting to kindle a ray of hope. I said after all it might not be so bad as he imagined; his boy had been well brought up, and might perhaps be trusted to keep out of the way of evil. It was thoughtless of him not to seek his father’s blessing and consent to his choice of an adventurous career, but it might be he had feared his opposition, and that he had no unworthy reason for concealing his plans. There was at least as much reason to hope as to despond, and he must look forward to his coming back, true to the instincts of his mountain home, wiser than he had set out.

His pale blue eye glistened, and he gasped like one who had seen a vision. ‘Ay! just so! Just so it appeared to me when I was on the Thierberg this morning! And now, in case my weak old heart did not see it clearly enough, God, in His mercy, has sent you to expound the thing more plainly to me. Now I know that I am heard.’

Poor old man! I shuddered lest the hope so strongly entertained should prove delusive in the end. I may never know the result; but I felt that at all events as he was one who took all things at God’s hands, nothing could, in one sense, come amiss; and for the present, at least, I saw that he went down to his house comforted.

I strolled along the street, and, possessed with the type of the Tirolean peasant, as I received it from this old man, I conceived a feeling of deeper curiosity for all whom I met by the way. I thought of them as of men for whom an unseen world is a reality; who estimate prayer and sacraments and the intercession of saints above steam-power and electricity. At home one meets with one such now and then, but to be transported into a whole country of them was like waking up from a long sleep to find oneself in the age of St. Francis and St. Dominic.

Whatever faults the Tirolese may have to answer for, they will not arise from religion being put out of sight. No village but has its hillside path marked with ‘the Way of the Cross;’ no bridge but carries the statue of S. John Nepomucene, the martyr of the Confessional; no fountain but bears the image of the local saint, a model of virtue to the place; no lone path unmarked by its way-side chapel, or its crucifix shielded from the weather by a rustic roof; no house but has its outer walls covered with memories of holy things; no room without its sacred prints and its holywater stoup. The churches are full of little rude pictures, recording scenes in which all the pleasanter events of life are gratefully ascribed to answers to prayer, while many who cannot afford this more elaborate tribute hang up a tablet with the words Hat geholfen (‘He has helped me’), or more simply still, ‘aus Dankbarkeit.’ Longfellow has written something very true and pretty, which I do not remember well enough to quote; but most will call to mind the verses about leaving landmarks, which a weary brother seeing, may take heart again; and it is incalculable how these good people may stir up one another to hope and endurance by such testimonies of their trust in a Providence. Sometimes, again, the little tablets record that such an one has undertaken a journey. ‘N. N. reiset nach N., pray for him;’ and we, who have come so far so easily, smile at the short distance which is thought worthy of this importance. The Gott segne meine Reise– ‘May God bless my journey’ – seems to come as naturally to them, however, as ‘grace before meat’ with us. But most of all, their care is displayed in regard to the dear departed. The spot where an accident deprived one of his life is sacred to all. ‘The honourable peasant N. N. was run over here by a heavy waggon;’ – ‘Here was N. N. carried away by the waters of the stream;’ with the unfailing adjunct, ‘may he rest in peace, let us pray for him;’ or sometimes, as if there were no need to address the recommendation to his own neighbours, ‘Stranger! pray for him.’

The straggling village on the opposite bank of the Inn is called Zell, though appearing part of Kufstein. It affords the best points for viewing the gloomy old fortress, and itself possesses one or two chapels of some interest. At Kiefersfelden, at a short distance on the Bavarian border, is the so-called Ottokapelle, a Gothic chapel marking the spot where Prince Otho quitted his native soil when called to take possession of the throne of Greece.

Kundl, about an hour from Kufstein, the third station, by rail,47 though wretchedly provided with accommodation, is the place to stop at to visit the curious and isolated church of S. Leonhard auf der Wiese (in the meadow), and it is well worthy of a visit. In the year 1004 a life-sized stone image of St. Leonard was brought by the stream to this spot; ‘floating,’ the wonder-loving people said, but it may well be believed that some rapid swollen torrent had carried the image away in its wild course from some chapel on a higher level. The people not knowing whence it came, reckoned its advent a miracle, and set it up in the highway, that all who passed might know of it. It was not long before a no less illustrious wayfarer than the Emperor Henry II. came that way, and seeing the uncovered image set up on high, stopped to inquire its history. When he had heard it, he vowed that if his arms were prosperous in Italy he would on his return build the saint an honourable church. Success indeed attended him in the campaign, and he was crowned Emperor at Pavia, but St. Leonard and his vow were alike forgotten. The year 1012 brought him again into Italy through Tirol, and passing the spot where he had registered his vow before, his horse, foaming and stamping, refused to pass the image or carry him further. The circumstance reminded him of his promise, and he at once set to work to carry it out worthily. The church was completed within a few years, but an unhappy accident signalized its completion. A young man who had undertaken to place the ornament on the summit was seized with vertigo in the moment of completing his exploit, and losing his balance was dashed lifeless on to the ground below.48 His remains were gathered up tenderly by the neighbours, and his skull laid as an offering at the foot of the crucifix on the high altar, where it yet remains. An inscription to the following effect is preserved in the church: ‘A.D. 1019 Præsens ecclesia Sti. Leonhardi a sancto Henrico Imperatore exstructa, et anno 1020 a summo Pontifice Benedicto VIII. consecrata est,’ though there would not seem to be any other record of the Pope having made the journey. S. Kunigunda, consort of Henry II., bore a great affection to the spot, and often visited it.

The image of St. Leonard now in the church bears the date of 1481, and there is no record of the time when it was substituted for the original.49 The interior has suffered a great deal during the whitewash period; but some of the original carvings are remarkable, particularly the grotesque creatures displayed on the main columns. On one a doubled-bodied lion is trampling on two dragons; on another a youth stands holding the prophetic roll of the book of revelation, and a hideous symbolical figure, with something of the form of a bear, cowers before him, showing a certain resemblance to the sculptures in the chapel-porch of Castle Tirol. Round the high altar are ten pilasters, each setting forth the figure of a saint, and all various. A great deal of the old work was destroyed, however, when it was rebuilt, about the year 1500.

Between St. Leonhard and Ratfield runs the Auflängerbründl – so called from the Angerberg, celebrated as itself a very charming excursion from Kundl – a watercourse directed by the side of the road through the charity of the townspeople of Rattenberg and Ratfeld, in the year 1424, with the view that no wayfarer might faint by the way for want of a drink of pure and refreshing water.

Rattenberg is a little town of some importance on account of the copper works in the neighbourhood, but not much frequented by visitors, though it has three passable inns. It is curious that the castle of Rottenburg near Rothholz, though so like in name, has a different derivation, the latter arising from the red earth of the neighbourhood, and the former from an old word Rat, meaning ‘richness,’ and in old documents it is found spelt Rat in berc (riches in the mountain). This was the favoured locality of the holy Nothburga’s earthly career.

St. Nothburga is eminently characteristic of her country. She was the poorest of village maidens, and yet attained the highest and most lasting veneration of her people by the simple force of virtue. She was born in 1280. The child of pious parents, she drank in their good instructions with an instinctive aptitude. Their lessons of pure and Christian manners seemed as it were to crystallize and model themselves in her conduct; she grew up a living picture of holy counsels. She was scarcely seventeen when the lord of Castle Rottenburg, hearing of her perfect life, desired to have her in his household. Her parents, knowing she could have no better protectors, when they were no more, than their honoured knight Henry of Rottenburg and his good wife Gutta, gladly accepted the proposal.50 In her new sphere Nothburga showed how well grounded was her virtue. It readily adapted itself to her altered position, and she became as faithful and devoted to her employers as she had been loving and obedient to her parents. In time she was advanced to the highest position of trust in the castle, and the greatest delight of her heart was fulfilled when she was nominated to superintend the distribution of alms to the poor. Her prudence enabled her to distinguish between real and feigned need, and while she delighted in ministering to the one, she was firm in resisting the appeals of the other. Her general uprightness won for her the respect of all with whom she had to do, and she was the general favourite of all classes.

Such bright days could not last; the enemy of God’s saints looked on with envy, and desired to ‘sift’ her ‘as wheat.’ The knight’s son, Henry VI., in progress of time brought home his bride, Ottilia by name; and according to local custom, the older Knight Henry ceded his authority to the young castellan, living himself in comparative retirement. Ottilia was young and thoughtless, and haughty to boot, and it was not without a feeling of bitter resentment that she saw both her husband and his parents looked to Nothburga to supply her deficiencies in the management of the household. She resolved to get rid of the faithful servant, and her fury against her was only increased in proportion as she realized that the perfect uprightness of her conduct rendered it impossible to discover any pretext for dismissing her.

For Nothburga it was a life of daily silent martyrdom. There were a thousand mortifications in her mistress’s power to inflict, and she lost no opportunity of annoying her, but never once succeeded in ruffling the gentleness of her spirit. ‘My life has been too easy hitherto,’ she would say in the stillness of her own heart; ‘now I am honoured at last by admission to the way of the Cross.’ There was no brightness, no praise, no subsequent hope of distinction, to be derived from her patience; they were stabs in the dark, seen by no human eye, which made her bleed day by day. Yet she would not complain, much less seek to change her service. She said it would have been ungrateful to her first benefactors and employers to leave them, so long as she could spend herself for them, and ungrateful to God to shirk the trial He had lovingly sent her.

A crucial test of her fidelity, however, was at hand. The day came when Knight Henry and Gutta his wife were called to their long rest, and with them the chief protection of Nothburga departed. She was now almost at Ottilia’s mercy. One of the first consequences of this change was that she was deprived of her favourite office of relieving the poor; and not only their customary alms were stopped, but their dole of food also; and as a final provocation, she was required to feed the pigs with the broken meat which she had been accustomed to husband for the necessitous.

The good girl’s heart bled to see the needy whom she had been wont to relieve turned hungry away. The only means that occurred to her of remedying the evil in some measure, was to deny herself her own food and distribute it among them. Restricting her own diet to bread and water, she saved a little basketful, which she would take down every evening when work was done to the foot of the Leuchtenburg, where the poorest of the castle dependents lived; and the blessing which multiplied the loaves in the wilderness made her scanty savings suffice to feed all who had come to beg of her.

That Nothburga contrived to feed the poor of a whole district, in spite of her orders to the contrary, of course became in time a ground of complaint for Ottilia. She had now a plausible reason for stirring up the Knight Henry against her. He had always defended her, out of regard for his parents’ memory; but coming one evening past the Leuchtenburg, at Ottilia’s instigation, he met Nothburga with her little burden, and asked her what she carried.

Here the adversary of the saints had prepared for her a great trial, says the legend. She, in her innocence, told fairly and honestly the import of her errand; but to the Knight’s eyes, who had meantime untied her apron, the contents appeared, the legend says, to be wood shavings; and further, putting the wine-flask to his lips, it seemed to him to contain soap-suds. To her charitable intention he had made no objection, but at this, which appeared to him a studied affront, he was furious. He would listen to no explanation, but, returning at once to the castle, he gave Ottilia free and full leave to deal with the offending handmaiden as she pleased. Ottilia readily put the permission into effect by directing the castle guard to forbid her, on her return, ever again to pass the threshold of the castle.

This blow told with terrible effect on the poor girl. During her service at the castle both her parents had died; she had now no home to resort to. Putting her trust in God, however, she retraced her steps alone through the darkness, and found shelter in a cottage of one of her clients. Her path was watched by the angels, who marked the track with fair seeds; and even to this day the hill-side which her feet so often pressed on her holy errand is said to be marked with a peculiar growth of flowers.

The next day she applied to a peasant of Eben to engage her as a field labourer. The peasant was exceedingly doubtful of her capacity for the work after the comparatively delicate nature of her previous mode of life. Her hardy perseverance and determination, aided by the grace of God, on which she implicitly relied, overcame all obstacles, and old Valentine soon found that her presence brought a blessing on all his substance. She had been with him about a year, when one day, being Saturday, he was very anxious to gather in the remainder of his harvest before an apprehended storm, and desired Nothburga, with the other reapers, to continue their labours after the hour of eve, when the holy rest was reckoned to have commenced. Nothburga, usually so obedient to his wishes, had the courage to refuse to infringe the commandment of religion; and to manifest that the will of God was on her side, showed him her sickle resting from labour, suspended in the air. Valentine, convinced by the prodigy, yielded to her representations, and her piety was more and more honoured by all the neighbours.

Soon after this, Ottilia, in the midst of her health and strength, was stricken with a dangerous illness. In presence of the fear of death she remembered her harsh treatment of Nothburga, and sent for her to make amends for the past. As the good girl reached her bed-side she was just under the influence of a frightful attack of fevered remorse. Her long golden hair waved in untended masses over the pillow, like the flames of purgatory; her eyes glared like wheels of fire. Unconscious of what was passing round her, and filled only with her distempered fancies, she cried piteously: ‘Drive away those horrid beasts! don’t let them come near me! And why do you let those pale-faced creatures pursue me with their hollow glances? If I did deny them food, I cannot help it now! Oh! keep those horrid swine off me! If I did give them the portion of the poor, it is no reason you should let them defile me and trample on me!’

Nothburga was melted with compassion, and her glance of sympathy seemed to chase away the horrid vision. Come to herself, and calm again, Otillia recognized her and begged her pardon, which we may well believe she readily accorded; and shortly after, having reconciled herself to God with true compunction, she fell asleep in peace.51

Henry proposed to Nothburga to come and resume her old post in the castle, and moreover to add to it that of superintending the nurture of his only boy. Nothburga gladly accepted his offer, but, in her strict integrity, insisted on accepting no remission from the three years’ service under which she had bound herself to Valentine. This concluded, she was received back with open arms at Castle Rottenburg, whither she took with her one of Valentine’s daughters to instruct in household duties, that she might be meet to succeed her when her time should come.

Days of peace on earth are not for the saints. Her fight was fought out. The privations she had undergone in sparing her food for the poor, and her subsequent exposure in the field, brought on an illness, under which she shortly after sank. In conformity with her express desire, her body was laid on a bier, to which two young oxen were yoked, and left to follow their own course. The willing beasts tramped straight away over hill and dale and water-course till they came to the village of Eben, then consisting of but a couple of huts of the poor tillers of the soil, and Valentine’s homestead; now, a thriving village, its two inns crowded every holiday with peasants, who make their excursions coincide with a visit of devotion to the peasant maiden’s shrine. A small field-chapel of St. Ruprecht was then the only place of devotion, but here next morning the body of the holy maiden was found carefully laid at the foot of the altar, and here it was reverently buried, and for centuries it has been honoured by all the country round.52 In 1434 the Emperor Maximilian, and Christopher, Prince-Bishop of Brixen, built a church over the spot, of which the ancient chapel served as the quire. In 1718 Gaspar Ignatius, Count of Künigl, the then Prince-Bishop, had the remains exhumed, and carried them with pomp to the neighbouring town of Schwatz, where they were left while the church was restored, and an open sarcophagus prepared for them to remain exposed for the veneration of the faithful, which was completed in 1738. In 1838 a centenary festival was observed with great rejoicing, and on March 27, 1862, the cycle of Nothburga’s honour was completed in her solemn canonization at Rome.

The lords of Rottenburg had had possession of this territory, and had been the most powerful family of Tirol, ever since the eighth century; one branch extending its sway over the valleys surrounding the Inn, and another branch commanding the country bordering the Etsch; Leuchtenburg and Fleims being the chief fortress-seats of these latter. Their vast power greatly harassed the rulers of Tirol. In every conflict between the native or Austrian princes and the Dukes of Bavaria their influence would always turn the scale, and they often seem to have exercised it simply to show their power. Their family pride grew so high, that it became a proverb among the people. It was observed that just during the period of the holy Nothburga’s sojourn in the castle the halo of her humble spirit seemed to exercise a charm over their ruling passion. That was no sooner brought to a close than it once more burst forth, and with intenser energy, and by the end of a century more so blinded them that they ventured on an attempt to seize the supreme power over the land. Friedrich mit der leeren Tasche was not a prince to lose his rights without a worthy struggle; and then ensued one which was a noteworthy instance of the protection which royalty often afforded to the poor against the oppressions of a selfish aristocracy in the Middle Ages. Friedrich was the idol of the people: in his youth his hardy temperament had made him the companion not only of the mountain huntsman, but even of the mountain hewer of wood. Called to rule over the country, he always stood out manfully for the liberties of the peasant and the burghers of the little struggling communities of Tirol. The lords and knights who found their power thereby restricted were glad to follow the standard of Henry VI., Count of Rottenburg, in his rebellions. Forgetting all patriotism in his struggle for power, Henry called to his aid the Duke of Bavaria, who readily answered his appeal, reckoning that as soon as, by aiding Henry, he had driven Friedrich out, he would shortly after be able to secure the prize for himself.

The Bavarian troops, ever rough and lawless, now began laying waste the country in ruthless fashion. A Bavarian bishop, moved to compassion by the sufferings of the poor people, though not of his own flock, pleaded so earnestly with the Duke, that he made peace with Friedrich, who was able to inflict due chastisement on Henry, for, powerful as he was, he was no match for him as a leader. He fell prisoner into Friedrich’s hands, who magnanimously gave him his liberty; but, according to the laws of the time, his lands and fiefs were forfeit. Though the spirit of the high-minded noble was unbroken, the darling aim of his race which had devolved upon him for execution was defeated; his occupation gone, and his hopes quenched, he wandered about, the last of his race, not caring even to establish himself in any of the fiefs which he held under the Duke of Bavaria, and which consequently yet remained to him.

The history of Henry VI. of Rottenburg has a peculiarly gloomy and fantastic character. Ambitious to a fault, it was one cause of his ill success that he exercised himself in the nobler pursuits of life rather than in the career of arms. Letters of his which are still preserved show that he owed the ascendancy he exercised over his neighbours quite as much to his strength of character and grasp of mind as to his title and riches. No complaint is brought against him in chronicles of the time of niggardliness towards the Church, or of want of uprightness or patience as a judge; he is spoken of as if he had learned to make himself respected as well as feared. But he lived apart in a lofty sphere of his own, seldom mixing in social intercourse, while his refined tastes prevented his becoming an adept in the art of war. Friedrich, on the other hand, who was a hero in the field by his bravery, was also the favourite of the people through his frank and ready-spoken sympathy. Henry had perhaps, on the whole, the finer – certainly the more cultivated – character, but Friedrich was more the man of the time; and it was this doom of succumbing to one to whom he felt himself superior which pressed most heavily on the last of the Rottenburgers. What became of him was never known; consequently many wild stories became current to account for his end: that he never laid his proud head low at the call of death, but yet wanders on round the precincts where he once ruled; that his untamable ambition made him a prey to the Power of Evil, who carried him off, body and soul, to the reward of the proud; that, shunning all sympathy and refusing all assistance, he died, untended and unknown, in a spot far from the habitations of men. It would appear most probable, however, that his death, like his life, was a contrast with the habits of his age: it is thought that, unable to bear his humiliation, he fell by his own hand within a twelvemonth of his defeat.