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,[2] 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.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5] 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.