S. MEINRAD, H. M.
(a.d. 861.)
[Authority, an ancient anonymous and perfectly authentic life in the library of the monastery at Einsiedeln.]
About the year of grace 797, was born Meinrad, Count of Hohenzollern. He was born in that part of Swabia, then called Sulichgau, which comprised the valleys of Steinlach and Sturzel, and the towns of Rottenburg and Sülchen.
Berthold, the father of Meinrad, had married the daughter of the Count of Sülchen, and lived with his wife in the strong castle of Sülchen on the Nekar.
Meinrad lived at home till he was ten or eleven years old. At that time the island of Reichenau possessed a Benedictine monastery of great reputation. This island is situated in the arm of the lake of Constance, called the Zeller-see, and very fertile. The monks superintended two schools in this island, connected with their monastery, one for the boys who were in training to be monks, the other for the sons of nobles, who desired to live in the world. At the time that Meinrad entered the school, his kinsman, Hatto of Sülchen, was abbot.
At this period the great lesson that the monks had to teach the Germans was, the dignity of labour. The Germans were a turbulent people, loving war, harrying their neighbour's lands, hunting and fighting, despising heartily the work of tilling the land, and tending cattle. The monks began to labour with their hands, and by degrees they broke through the prejudices of the time, and converted the Germans into an agricultural people. In 818, when Meinrad was aged 21, the first vines were planted in Reichenau, to become, to this day, the principal source of revenue to those to whom it belongs. The position of Reichenau, on the main road to Italy, gave it a special importance. Many foreign bishops, who, halting there on their journeys, had carried away with them a pleasant memory of that quiet isle in the blue lake, returned to it to spend their last years in peace. Thus the Bishop Egino retired to Reichenau, and built there, in 799, the church of Our Lady, at the western extremity of the island, which still exists. At the time of the consecration of this church, Meinrad was in the monastery school; this was in 816. Seven hundred monks, a hundred novices, and four hundred scholars assisted at the ceremony, and sang the grand psalms and Cœlestis urbs with wondrous effect.
The time came for Meinrad to leave school and decide on his career. The voice of his heart called him to the service of God, and he prepared for Holy Orders. In 821 he was ordained deacon, and shortly afterwards priest. He was fond of study; but the book that most charmed his imagination was the account of the Fathers of the Desert, by Cassian. The forms of these venerable hermits in their caves seemed to appear to him and beckon him on. The voice which had called him to the priesthood said to him, "Friend, go up higher," and he took vows as a monk in the abbey of Reichenau, to his great-uncle Erlebald, now superior, on the resignation of Hatto in 822. He was then aged twenty-five.
At the upper extremity of the Lake of Zürich was the little cloister of Bollingen, dependant on that of Reichenau. It contained a prior and twelve brethren, who had established themselves in this wild neighbourhood, lost, as it were, among the mountains, to become the teachers of a neighbourhood buried in darkness. They established a school for the gentry and also for the serfs, in which they taught the boys what was suitable for their different stations in life. Being in want of a master for this school, they sent to the abbot of Reichenau for one. His choice fell on Meinrad, who was at once despatched to the humble priory, situated on the confines of civilization, to which the mountains and dense forests seemed to say, "Thus far and no further shalt thou go."
In his new situation, Meinrad drew upon himself general esteem and affection. His prudence in the direction of souls, his learning, and his modesty, endeared him to all.
Nevertheless, from the moment of his entering into the priory, Meinrad had felt a yearning in his heart for a life more secluded, in which he could pray and meditate without distraction. About two leagues off, beyond the lake, rose Mount Etzel, covered with dense forest. Often from the window of his cell did his eyes rest, with an invincible longing, on the blue mountain. The desire became, at length, so uncontrollable, that he resolved to visit the Etzel, and seek among its rocks for some place where he might pass his days in repose. One day, accordingly, he took with him one of his pupils, and, entering a boat, rowed to the foot of the desired mount. A few hours after he was at the summit, and his heart beat with a sweet joy at the sight of a place to which his yearning soul had long turned. Behind him was a pathless forest of pines, inhabited by wolves, but he feared them not. He descended the hill by the side of Rapperschwyl, and arrived at the village, called afterwards Altendorf. He rested at the house of a pious widow, who received him hospitably. To her Meinrad confided his design, and asked her to minister to his necessities on the Etzel, should he retire thither. She readily promised to do so. Having thanked her, he returned full of joy to Bollingen. He asked the prior to give him his benediction and permission to accomplish his project. He, with regret, permitted him to respond to the call of grace, and Meinrad at once tore himself from his companions and pupils, and crossed the lake to the beloved mountain. This was in June, 828, when Meinrad was aged thirty-one. He took nothing with him save his missal, a book of instructions on the Gospels, the rule of S. Benedict, and the works of Cassian. Burdened with these volumes, he climbed the Etzel, and stood on a commanding point. At his feet and before him lay the blue lake of Zürich, its waters sleeping in sunshine; behind him was the gloomy horror of the forest. Beyond, the Alpine peaks wreathed in glaciers, glittering in the light, and around him a solemn silence, broken only by the distant scream of a magpie, or the creaking of the pines in the breeze.
The first care of the new solitary was to provide himself with shelter against rain and storm. He collected broken boughs, and interlaced them between four pines that served as corner posts to his hovel, and roofed it in with fern. This was his first house; but shortly after, the widow, having heard that he had retired to the Etzel, built him a hut of pine logs, and a little chapel, in which he might offer the Holy Sacrifice. She attended to all his necessities, as she had promised, and Meinrad was now at the summit of happiness.
Strange must have been those first evenings and nights in loneliness. There is a sense of mystery which oppresses the spirit when alone among the fragrant trees, that stand stiff and entranced, awaiting the coming on of night. To persons unaccustomed to the woods, few moments of greater solemnity could occur than those following the set of sun. A shadow falls over the forest, and in the deep winding tunnels that radiate among the grey, moss-hung trunks, the blackness of night condenses apace.
Mysterious noises are heard; the rustling of large birds settling themselves for the night, the click of falling cones, the cry of the wild cat, or the howl of the wolf. The gold light, that all day has flickered through the boughs and diapered the spine strewn soil, has wholly disappeared, save that for a moment it lies a flake of fire on the distant snowy peak. Patches of ash-grey sky, seen through the interstices of the branches, diffuse no light. Perhaps an evening breeze whispers secrets among the pine-tops and pipes between the trunks, or hums an indistinct tune, pervading the whole air, among the green needle-like leaves of the firs. And then, when night has settled in, the moon shoots its fantastic silver among the moving branches, and draws weird pictures over the brambles and uneven soil. Branches snap with a report like a pistol, and voices of unseen birds and beasts sound ghost-like among the dark aisles of the labyrinth of firs.
It is well to picture these surroundings, when we call up before us the figures of the old hermits. Their trials were not only of hunger, and thirst, and cold; there was the trial of nerve as well.
In the forest cell, Meinrad disciplined his body by rigorous fasts, and his soul by constant prayer. By degrees, his cabin became a resort of pilgrims, who arrived seeking ease to their troubled consciences, or illumination to their dark understandings. Always united to God, always penetrated with the sense of His presence, he strove to know the will of God, and to submit his own will wholly to that.
Seven years passed, and the number of those who visited him increased every day. Then, finding his solitude no more a solitude, he resolved to leave the Etzel, and bury himself in some nook far from the habitations of men.
Behind the Etzel extended a vast forest untrodden by man, whose savage and gloomy loneliness attracted Meinrad. Whilst he was musing on his projected flight, some of his old pupils at Bollingen came, as was their wont occasionally, to visit their former master. Meinrad descended the mountain with them to the point where the river Sihl, after numerous windings in the forest, flows gently through an agreeable valley, and empties itself into the lake. The pines on its banks were reflected in the glassy water, and in its crystal depths could be seen multitudes of trout. The young monks desiring to have a day's fishing, Meinrad crossed the river, and entered the forest. He walked on silent and meditating, looking around him, in hopes of discovering some place suitable for the purpose that occupied his mind. After a walk of an hour and a half, in a southerly direction, he reached the foot of a range of hills which formed a semi-circle as far as the Alb. In this basin, enclosed within the arms of the mountain, wound a little stream over a bed of moss, from a spring beneath the roots of two large pines. To the south lay the valley of the Alb, blocked by the rugged snow-topped crags of the Mythen. This was just such a solitude as Meinrad had desired. He fell on his knees, and thanked God for having brought him to so pleasant a spot, and drinking for the first time from the fountain, he returned to his companions, who, having caught a bag full of fish, went back with him to his hermitage, and as evening fell, returned to Bollingen.
Meinrad now prepared to leave the Etzel. He went to Altendorf to thank the widow who had provided for him, and then he departed, taking with him one monk of Bollingen and a peasant, to carry such things as would be necessary in the wilderness. As they descended the hill towards the river, the brother saw a nest of ravens on a branch; he climbed the tree, and taking the nest, brought it along with the two young birds it contained to Meinrad, who kept them, to be the companions of his solitude.
A few paces above the spring, where there was a gentle rise, he decided should be the site of his habitation, and there accordingly he erected a simple hut of logs. Providence did not desert him. The abbess Hedwig, head of a small community of women at Zürich, undertook to minister to his necessities, in place of the widow of Altendorf; and from time to time she sent him food, and such things as be needed.
He was now left in complete solitude, and often the temptation came upon him, as he lay shivering with cold in the winter nights, and the snow drifted about his cabin, to give up this sort of life, and return to the community at Bollingen or Reichenau. But he resisted these thoughts, as temptations of the evil one, with redoubled prayer and fasting. In this place he spent several years in perfect retirement, till a carpenter of Wollerau, coming there one day in quest of some wood, discovered his cell. After that, he was visited by hunters, and then, by degrees, a current of pilgrims flowed towards his abode, as had been the case on the Etzel. What added to this was the present of a statue of the Blessed Virgin and Child, made to Meinrad by Hildegard, daughter of Louis the German, who had been appointed by her father abbess of Zürich, in 853. This image speedily acquired the credit of being miraculous, and thus began that incessant pilgrimage which has continued for over a thousand years to the venerated shrine where it is preserved.
Meinrad had spent twenty-five years in solitude; and his love for this mortified and retired life had grown stronger in his heart as he grew older. He was glad when winter, the frost, and the snow came to block the paths, and diminish the concourse of pilgrims; yet in spite of the rigour of the climate at that season, and the want of roads through the forest, he still saw many visitors, who came to confide to him their troubles, as children to a father, and to ask counsel of his prudence. There were also days in which he was alone, and, shut up in his log-hut, heard only the hissing of the wind among the trees, and the howling of the wolves, pressed by hunger in the forest; all was sad around the hermitage, the flowers, the grass, the little spring slept under the snow, spread like a white pall over dead nature. The two ravens, perched on a branch of pine which overhung the cabin door, uttered their plaintive croak. Meinrad alone was happy. He celebrated the Divine Mysteries, and holding in his hands the eternal Victim, offered himself, in conjunction with the sacrifice of Calvary; desiring earnestly that he might be found worthy to die the death of a martyr. His prayer was heard.
During the last years of Meinrad's life, pilgrims laid presents at the door of Meinrad, and before the image of Mary. Those that served to adorn the chapel he kept, the rest he gave away to the poor. Two men, one from the Grisons, named Peter, the other a Swabian, named Richard, suspecting that he had a store of money collected from the pilgrims, resolved on robbing him. They met in a tavern at Endigen, where now stands Rapperschwyl, where they spent the night. Next day, January 21st, 861, long before daybreak, they took the road to the Etzel and entered the forest. For a while they lost their way, for the paths were covered with snow. However, at length they discovered the hermitage. The ravens screamed at their approach, and fluttered with every token of alarm about the hut, so that, as the murderers afterwards confessed, they were somewhat startled at the evident tokens of alarm in the birds. The assassins reached the chapel door. S. Meinrad had said his morning prayers, and had celebrated mass. The murderers watched him through a crack in the door, and when he had concluded the sacrifice, and had turned from the altar, they knocked. Meinrad opened, and received them cheerfully. "My friends," said he; "had you arrived a little earlier, you might have assisted at the sacrifice. Enter and pray God and His Saints to bless you; then come with me and I will give you such refreshments as my poor cell affords." So saying he left them in the chapel, and went to prepare food in his own hut.
The murderers rushed after him, and he turned and said, smiling, "I know your intention. When I am dead, place one of these tapers at my head, and the other at my feet, and escape as quickly as you can, so as not to be overtaken."
He gave to one his cloak and to the other his tunic; and they beat him about the head with their sticks, till he fell dead at their feet. Then they threw his body on the bed of dried leaves whereon he was wont to sleep, and cast a rush mat over it. They then searched the hut for money, but found none. Before leaving, they remembered the request of Meinrad, and placed one of the tapers at his head, the other they took to the chapel, to light it at the ever-burning lamp. When they returned, to their astonishment, they saw that the candle at the head of the body was alight. Filled with a vague fear, they set down the other candle and took to flight. But the two faithful ravens pursued them, screaming harshly, and dashing against the heads of the murderers with their beaks and claws, as though desirous of avenging their master's death. Frightened more and more, and continually pursued and exposed to the attack of the enraged birds, the murderers ran towards Wollerau, where they met the carpenter who had discovered the retreat of Meinrad. This man, recognizing the tame ravens of the hermit, and suspecting mischief, hastily bade his brother not allow the two men to escape out of his sight, and then ran to the hermitage, where he found the body of the Saint. The candle at his feet had set fire to the mat, but the flame had expired as soon as it had reached the corpse. The carpenter at once returned to Wollerau, where he spread the news of the murder, and having bade his wife and some friends take care of the body of S. Meinrad, he went in pursuit of the assassins on the Zürich road. He soon overtook them. The ravens were fluttering with shrill screams at the windows of a house. He entered and denounced the murderers. They were taken, and delivered over to justice. By their confession all the circumstances of the martyrdom were made known.
Relics, at Einsiedeln, where, in 1861, the thousandth anniversary of the Saint's death was celebrated with great pomp.
FOOTNOTES:
[100] This account is a translation of the Acts; it is a very fair specimen of the original documents as written by the Church notaries at the time. The style being too simple to please the taste of later ages, too many of them were re-written in florid diction, and long speeches were put in the martyrs' mouths.
[101] One reading is insolutus, another in soleis.
[102] That is, to intercede for him when he, the martyr, stood in the presence of Christ in Paradise.
[103] That is, extending their arms, so that they formed the symbol of the Cross.
[104] Slightly abbreviated from the Acts.
[105] Aurelian was a special votary of the sun.
[106] There is some blunder here.
[107] S. Hieron, Ep. 6.
[108] S. August. Serm. 274.
[109] Here a difficulty occurs. There is no such name in the lists of the prefects of the city. According to this account, he transferred to the deputy, Aspasius, the duty of sentencing her. In some accounts he is called Aspasius Paternus. A Paternus was prefect of the city in 264 and 265; an Ovinius Paternus in 281. Aspasius Paternus, pro-consul of Africa, in or about 260, is mentioned by S. Cyprian. It is probable that Symphronius was not prefect of the city, but a powerful senator, and that Aspasius is the same as Ovinius Paternus. Transcribers made havoc of the names in the Acts.
[110] Antiphon to Ps. cix. Dixit Dominus, for S. Agnes' Day, and Greek Menæa.
[111] This is appointed as the antiphon to the Magnificat for S. Agnes' Day.
[112] Prudentius.
[113] Ibid.
[114] S. Ambrose lib. I. De Virgin. c. 2.
[January 22.]
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