Hautecombe may be reached in less than an hour, but there is a delicious charm in floating idly around this gem of a lake, all blue and gold, giving one’s self up to dreamy thought, breathing the mountain air, listening to the gentle waves as they break against the shore and to the melancholy songs of the boatmen, and looking at the chalets on the hillsides, the meadows and pastures, the herds with their tinkling bells, the insects floating in the sun, the quivering leaves and shimmering lights, and the dark pile of the abbey with its shadowy cloisters on the further shore.
At length we land on the terrace at the foot of a tall, octagon tower that looks like a pharos, and, indeed, serves as one. The vast buildings that constitute the abbey, the Gothic church with its painted walls, its storied windows, the tombs and cenotaphs on every side, and the three hundred statues that people its chapels and aisles, are well worth a visit. More than one tomb tells of the brave exploits of a valiant race, the glorious part its chiefs took in the Crusades, their attachment to the Holy See, for which they often shed their blood in the continual wars of Italy, and their prowess on every battle-field of Europe. All these monuments of white stone, and these pale statues standing in niches or lying on tombs, have a somewhat ghastly, ghostly look that is the more striking from the groundwork of black schist. The house of Savoy, which gradually rose by the bravery, policy, and fortunate alliances of its counts, first ruled over a sterile domain in the Cottian Alps of which Chambéry was the principal town. These princes were remarkable for their political sagacity and gallantry on the battle-field. This was in part owing to their peculiar position. Savoy was in the middle ages a border-land which forced its knights to live in the saddle and hold themselves in readiness to meet the enemy, whether on the side of France or the vast domain of the German Empire. And when not needed at home they were always at the service of their allies, so that they took part in all the wars of the times, and led a life of knight-errantry that often bordered on romance. Humbert aux Blanches Mains, the first count, was a descendant of Duke Witikind, a contemporary of Charlemagne. His benefactions to the churches of that day are still on record. The line of counts ended with Amédée VIII., who was created duke in the fifteenth century. The ducal line extended through three centuries, when the peace of Utrecht in 1713 recognized Victor Amédée as King of Sardinia.
The abbey of St. Mary of Hautecombe was founded in the year 1125 by Count Amédée III. through the influence of St. Bernard and St. Guérin, with whom he had intimate relations. Combe is an old French word signifying a valley between two mountains. The Cistercians generally built their convents in a valley. The first abbot was St. Amédée d’Hauterive, of a distinguished family in Dauphiné, who passed his youth at the court of the Emperor Henry of Germany, but afterwards became a monk at Clairvaux, and was appointed abbot of Hautecombe by St. Bernard himself. The Emperor Conrad II. held him in such esteem that he made him a member of his council, and Frederic I., his chancellor. And when, in the time of the Second Crusade, preached by St. Bernard, Count Amédée took the cross at Metz in presence of an immense multitude, and set forth with his nephew, Louis VII. of France (in 1147), he left both his son and estates to the guardianship of the holy abbot of Hautecombe, who proved himself fully equal to the trust. He was an able writer also, and left eight homilies in honor of the Blessed Virgin, which still form part of the collection of the fathers. They used to be read on certain days of the year in the churches of Lausanne, of which he died archbishop in 1158. His tomb is still to be seen in the cloister at Hautecombe.
The second abbot was St. Vivian, likewise a disciple of St. Bernard’s. By his exalted sanctity he gave additional renown to the abbey, which so prospered that when St. Bernard visited it a few years after its foundation it already numbered two hundred monks. Many eminent prelates have sprung from this house, two of whom were elevated to the pontifical chair—Geoffroy de Châtillon in 1241, under the name of Celestin II., and Nicholas III. in 1277, who belonged to the Orsini family. It was the latter who gave the highest sanction to the devotion of the scapular of Mount Carmel by the beatification of Simon Stock, who died at Bordeaux in 1265, in the hundredth year of his age.
Hautecombe does not seem to have been at first intended as a place of sepulture. Count Amédée III. died two years after his departure, on the isle of Cyprus, of some epidemic in the camp. His son, Humbert III., succeeded him. This prince was an able ruler, as brave as he was pious, and valiantly defended his domains against Guy IV. of Dauphiné. He also distinguished himself at the siege of Milan, and was always the ally and ardent defender of the rights of the Holy See. The religious education he had received from St. Amédée gave him a proper estimate of earthly things, and he would have gladly renounced the world and become a monk at Hautecombe, had it not been for the remonstrances of his people. He often retired here for a season, as well as at Notre Dame des Alpes, and when he felt his life was drawing to a close he took the holy habit and died a few days after with a reputation for sanctity which time has not dimmed. Pope Gregory XVI. authorized public honors to be paid him, and Savoy celebrates his festival on the 4th of March, believed to be the day of his death. It was he who conceived the idea of making Hautecombe the burial-place of his family, and he was the first to find a grave here. The statue on his tomb represents him in the Cistercian habit with sabots on his feet.
Two brothers of Humbert the Saint, as he is called, Peter and John, and a sister named Margaret, embraced the monastic life and died in the odor of sanctity. Several other members of the house of Savoy have also been raised to our altars. A grandson of Humbert’s, buried behind the high altar at Hautecombe, was beatified by Pope Gregory XVI. in 1838 under the name of the Blessed Boniface. His festival is on the 13th of March. He was styled, when young, the Absalom of the age, on account of his personal beauty, but he early sought refuge from the seductions of the world in the Grande Chartreuse, where he took the habit of St. Bruno. He was subsequently called forth from his cell and appointed archbishop of Canterbury and primate of England. Pope Innocent IV. consecrated him at Lyons. He was noted for his charity, and was at once an able theologian and jurisconsult. He defended the rights of the church against Henry III. with energy, and showed equal zeal in supporting the royal authority amid the disaffections of the times, thereby inspiring so much confidence in the king that he appointed him regent when he went to France in 1259. Having gone to Savoy in 1270 to visit his brother, Count Philip, Archbishop Boniface fell ill and died, after an episcopate of twenty-five years, at the castle of St. Hélène, in the valley of the Isère, and was buried at Hautecombe. The statue on his tomb represents him with a serpent at his feet, emblem of prudence, and a bas-relief depicts him defending the rights of the church before Henry III.
Count Amédée IX. and two princesses of the house of Savoy are also invoked as saints. There is a statue of St. Margaret of Savoy in the chapel of St. Felix at Hautecombe, representing her in a monastic dress, her hands meekly crossed on her breast. She was a daughter of Amédée, prince of Achaia, and after the death of her husband, the Marquis of Montferrat, having been wholly converted to God by the preaching of St. Vincent Ferrer, she entered a monastery and devoted herself to the care of the sick in a hospital. She was canonized by Pope Clement X.
The Blessed Louise of Savoy was an angel of piety from her childhood, and after the death of her husband, Hugues de Châlons, prince of Orange, she being then twenty-seven years of age and free from all obligations to her family, was solemnly veiled a nun in the convent of the Clairists at Orbe, which had been founded by a princess of her husband’s family early in the fifteenth century, and still observed the rule in all its primitive rigor. Here she died in 1503 at the age of forty-two. Fifty years after her death the Calvinists of Switzerland overthrew the altars of the conventual church, and gave the nuns the choice of going into exile or renouncing the monastic life. They chose the former, but before quitting the cloister they sent a crier through the streets to proclaim at the sound of a trumpet that if they had offended any one whomsoever they humbly begged his forgiveness, and declaring that for the love of God they forgave the offence committed against themselves in being banished from their monastery. They were nineteen in number. They took with them some chalices, ornaments, and rich vestments they owed to the liberality of the Princess Louise, and a Madonna of carved wood, called Notre Dame de la Grâce, which she had given the convent at her entrance into religion. At Ouchy they embarked in three small boats for Evian, on the southern shore of the Lake of Geneva, then faithful to the device on one of its gates: Deo regique fidelis perpetuo—gates opened more than once, at that disastrous period, to exiles of the faith. The sky was clear when the nuns set forth, but a sudden tempest sprang up which threatened destruction to their frail barks. The boatmen themselves were alarmed, much more these timid doves just driven from their nest, and to lighten the boats they threw all their effects into the water. They succeeded, however, in getting ashore, and the magistrates and people of Evian came forth in procession to meet them, the bells meanwhile ringing out a peal of welcome. A few nights after some fishermen found Notre Dame de la Grâce gleaming among the cliffs of Meillerie, and the people of Evian went forth again with white banners to receive and convey it to the church. Some years later Count Emanuel Philibert built these exiles a convent at Evian, where this Madonna was preserved for more than two centuries; but in 1792 the nuns were again dispersed and the Virgin concealed. The convent is now used as a Petit Séminaire, but people from all the country around still go to the chapel to pray before the Madonna of the Blessed Louise of Savoy.
Another princess, but not of the house of Savoy, is specially honored at Hautecombe—St. Erine, daughter of the Emperor Licinius, and niece of Constantine the Great. She was taken captive in the East by the army of Sapor II. of Persia, and martyred because she would not renounce the faith. Her body was afterwards taken to Patras, and Anselmo, a bishop of the Morea in the thirteenth century, who had great devotion to her, gave a portion of her remains to the abbey of Hautecombe, which, in spite of many vicissitudes, is still preserved here in a reliquary of silver given by Charles Felix, King of Sardinia. The boatmen on the Lac du Bourget invoke St. Erine in perilous storms, and many miracles are attributed to her intervention throughout the valley. On Whitmonday her relics are solemnly exposed to veneration in the church.
In one of the aisles at Hautecombe is the tomb of Beatrice, daughter of Count Thomas I., and granddaughter of Humbert the Saint—one of the most beautiful and accomplished princesses of that age. She married Raymond Bérenger, the last count of Provence, and was not only one of the most brilliant queens of the Court of Love, but rivalled the troubadours themselves in the Gai Science. One of her songs, addressed to her husband, has been preserved: