Tyrol (Austria) -- Description and travel; Tyrol (Austria) -- History
The work was soon started, and from far and near peasants and even
nobles came or sent offerings so that they might have some part in the
work. Then a strange thing happened. All the virtue, which had made
the spot one of miracles, and one of such good fortune to the halt,
diseased, blind, and dumb, seemed to depart. Hardly had the workmen
commenced the foundations of the proposed chapel ere accident after
accident occurred, some of them fatal. The stones would not remain in
place, and everything connected with the building "went wrong."
Another curious happening was the presence day by day of two white
doves, which came down, apparently from out of the woods higher up
the mountain-side, and picked up every chip of wood upon which any of
the workers' blood had fallen when they cut themselves with their
tools (as they frequently did), and then at once flew away with the
chips in their beaks.
[Illustration: A WAYSIDE SHRINE IN A PINE WOOD]
Finding that this action of the doves continued and that no progress
could be made, the hermit determined to seek an explanation of the
mystery, and so one day he followed the birds up the mountain-side,
and on reaching the spot where he saw them descend he found to his
astonishment a perfect miniature chapel or shrine which had been
constructed out of the chips and shavings the doves had carried away.
"In this miracle the hermit discovered the directing hand of God, and
going down again to his brother he entreated him to have the
contemplated chapel built upon the spot which had been so miraculously
pointed out." This the latter willingly consented to do, and the work
now progressed without accident or other interruption. The chapel so
erected, which is further up the hillside than the larger church of
St. George, was rebuilt at the time the latter was erected in the
eighteenth century.
From time to time other pilgrims both noble and simple who visited the
shrine set amid the woods and mountains were moved to remain, and thus
gradually a community was gathered together living in roughly built
huts in the vicinity of the hermit's cell, which in course of time
about the twelfth century was put by the then Bishop of Brixen under
the rules governing the order of St. Benedict. The monks not only
built a monastery but cultivated the surrounding land, and quite a
large community at last dwelt in this secluded spot. But the life of
the monks was destined to be very chequered, and often troubled with
grave misfortunes. Fire, avalanches, famine, and disease all did their
best to extirpate the brotherhood. And at last, at the beginning of
the eighteenth century--after having been established at St.
Georgenberg for more than five hundred years--it was decided to remove
the monastic institutions to Fiecht.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account