Rattenberg was, in 1651, the scene of a tragic event, sad as the denouement of many a fiction. The high-spirited consort of Archduke Leopold V., Claudia de’ Medici, who, at his death, governed the country so well, and by her sagacity kept her dominions at peace, while the rest of Germany was immersed in the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, yet did not altogether escape the charge of occasional harshness in collecting the revenues which she knew so well how to administer. Her chancellor, Wilhelm Biener, a trusty and devoted servant and counsellor, drew on himself considerable odium for his zeal in these matters. On one occasion he got into a serious controversy with Crosini, Bishop of Brixen, concerning the payment of certain taxes from which the prelate claimed exemption, and in the course of it wrote him a letter couched in such very unguarded terms, that the bishop, unused to be so dealt with, could not forbear exclaiming, ‘The man deserves to lose the fingers that could write such an intemperate effusion!’ The exclamation was not thought of again till years after.
Claudia died in 1648, and then the hatred against Biener, which was also in some measure a hatred of races, for Claudia had many southerners at her court, broke forth without hindrance. He was accused[23] of appropriating the State money he had been so earnest in collecting, and though tried by two Italian judges, he was ultimately condemned, in 1651, to lose his head. Biener sent a statement of his case to the Archduke Ferdinand Karl; and the young prince, believing the honesty of his mother’s faithful adviser, immediately ordered a reprieve. The worst enemy and prime accuser of the fallen favourite was Schmaus, President of the Council, this time a German, and he contrived by detaining the messenger to make him arrive just too late in Rattenberg, then still a strong fortress, where he lay confined, and where the sentence was to be carried out.
Biener had all along steadfastly maintained his innocence; and stepping on to the scaffold, he had again repeated the assertion, adding, ‘So truly as I am innocent, I summon my accuser before the Judgment-seat above before another year is out.’[24] When the executioner stooped to lift up the head before the people, he found lying by its side three fingers of his right hand, without having had any knowledge that he had struck them off, though he might have done so by the unhappy man having raised his hand in the way of the sword in the last struggle. The people, however, saw in it the fulfillment of the words of the bishop, as well as a ghastly challenge accompanying his dying message to President Schmaus. Nor did they forget to note that the latter died of a terrible malady some months before the close of the year. Biener’s wife lost her senses when she knew the terrible circumstances of his death; the consolations of her director and of her son, who lived to his ninetieth year in the Francescan convent at Innsbruck, were alike powerless to calm her. She escaped in the night, and wandered out into the mountains no one knows whither. But the people say she lives on to be a witness of her husband’s innocence, and may be met on lonely ways proclaiming it, but never harming any. Only, when anyone is to die in Büchsenhausen,[25] where her married life passed so pleasantly, the ‘Bienerweible’ will appear and warn them. It is a remarkable instance of the easy way in which one myth passes into another, that though this event happened but a little over two hundred years ago, the Bienerweible and the Berchtl are already confounded in the popular mind.[26]
Another name prized in Tirolese annals, which must not be forgotten in connexion with Rattenberg, is Alois Sandbichler, the Bible commentator, who was born there in 1751. He passed a brilliant career as Professor in the University of Salzburg, but died at the age of eighty in his native village.
The neighbourhood of Brixlegg is very pretty, and the views from the bridge by no means to be overlooked.
[1] This excursion was made on occasion of a different journey from that mentioned in Chapter i. Of course, if taken on the way from Kufstein to Innsbruck, you would take the Wildschönau before the Zillerthal.
[2] Whoever comes into the Zillerthal is sure to visit it a second time.
[3] In the Vintschgau (see infra) the leading cow has the title of Proglerin, from the dialectic word proglen, to carry one’s head high. She wears also the most resounding bell.
[4] ‘Kaspar my name: from the East I came: I came thence with great speed: five thousand miles in fourteen days: Melchior, step in.’ Zingerle gives a version of the whole set of rimes.