NORTH-TIROL--UNTERINNTHAL (RIGHT-INN BANK).
KUFSTEIN TO ROTTENBURG.
... 'Peasant of the Alps,
Thy humble virtues, hospitable home,
And spirit patient, pious, proud, and free;
Thy self-respect, grafted on innocent thoughts;
Thy days of health, thy nights of sleep, thy toil
By danger dignified, yet guiltless; hopes
Of cheerful old age, and then a quiet grave
With cross and garland over its green turf,
And thy grandchildren's love for epitaph,
This do I see!...'
Byron (Manfred).
When, after our forced détour, we next penetrated into Tirol, it
was by the way of Kufstein. Ruffled as we had been in the meantime
by Bavarian 'Rohheit,' we were glad to find ourselves again in the
hands of the gentle Tirolese.
Kufstein, however, is not gentle in appearance. Its vast fortress
seems to shed a stifling gloom over the whole place; it looks so
hard and selfish and tyrannical, that you long to get away from its
influence. Noble hearts from honest Hungary have pined away within its
cold strong grasp; and many a time, as my sketch-book has been turned
over by Magyar friends, the page which depicted its outline--for it
wears a grand and gallant form, such as the pencil cannot resist--has
raised a deep sigh over the 'trauriges Andenken' it served to call
up. [46]
When Margaretha Maultasch ceded the country she found herself unable
to govern, to Austria at the earnest request of her people, in 1363,
it was stipulated that Kufstein, Kitzbühel, and Rattenberg, which had
been added to it by her marriage with Louis of Bradenburg, should
revert to Bavaria. These three dependencies were recovered by the
Emperor Maximilian in 1504, the two latter accepting his allegiance
gladly, the former holding out stoutly against him. The story of
the reduction of this stronghold is almost a stain on his otherwise
prudent and prosperous reign.
Pienzenau, its commander, who was in the Bavarian interest, had
particularly excited his ire by setting his men to sweep away with
brooms the traces of the small damage which had been effected by
his cannon, placed at too great a distance to do more than graze the
massive walls. Philip von Recenau, Regent of Innsbruck, meantime cast
two enormous field-pieces, which received the names of Weckauf and
Purlepaus. These entirely turned the tide of affairs. Chronicles of
the time do not mention their calibre, but declare that their missiles
not only pierced the 'fourteen feet-thick wall' through and through,
but entered a foot and a half into the living rock. Pienzenau's
heart misgave him when he saw the work of these destructive engines,
and hastened to send in his submission to the Emperor; but it was
too late. 'So he is in a hurry to throw away his brooms at last,
is he?' cried Maximilian. 'But he should have done it before. He has
allowed the wall of this noble castle to be so disgracefully shattered,
that he can make no amends but by giving up his own carcass to the
same fate.'
No entreaty could move the Emperor from carrying out this chastisement,
and some five-and-twenty of the principal men who had held out against
him were condemned to be beheaded on the spot. When eleven had fallen
before the headsman's sword, Erich, Duke of Brunswick, sickening at
the scene of blood, pleaded so earnestly with the Emperor, that he
obtained the pardon of the rest. The eleven were buried by the pious
country-people in a common grave; and who will may yet tread the ground
where their remains rest in a little chapel built over their grave
at Ainliff (dialectic for eleven), on the other side of the river Inn.
Its situation near the frontier has made it the scene of other sieges,
of which none is more endeared to Tiroleans than that of 1809, when
the patriot Speckbacher distinguished himself by many a dauntless deed.
If Kufstein has long had a truce to these stirring memories, many
a fantastic story has floated out of it concerning the prisoners
harboured there, even of late years. The Hungarian patriot brigand,
Rocsla Sandor (Andrew Roshla), who won by his unscrupulous daring quite
a legendary place in popular story, was long confined here. He was
finally tried and condemned (but I think not executed) at Szeghedin,
in July 1870; 454 other persons were included in the same trial,
of whom 234 under homicidal charges; 100 homicides were laid to his
charge alone, but there is no doubt that his services to the popular
cause, at the same time that they condoned some of his excesses, in
the popular judgment may have disposed the authorities to exaggerate
the charges against him. The whole story is fantastic, and even in
Kufstein, where he was almost an alien, there was admiration and
sympathy underlying the shudder with which the people spoke of him. A
much more interesting and no less romantic narrative, was told me of a
Hungarian political prisoner, who formed the solitary instance of an
escape from the stony walls of the fortress. His lady-love--and she
was a lady by birth--with the heroic instincts of a Hungarian maiden,
having with infinite difficulty made out where he was confined,
followed him hither in peasant disguise, and with invincible
perseverance succeeded, first in engaging herself as servant to the
governor and then in conveying every day to her lover, in his soup,
a hank of hemp. With this he twisted a rope and got safely away;
and this occurred not more than six or seven years ago.
St. Louis's day fell while we were at Kufstein--the name-day of the
King of Bavaria; and being the border town, the polite Tiroleans
make a complimentary fête of it. There was a grand musical Mass,
which the officers from the Bavarian frontier attended, and a modest
banquet was offered them after it. The peasants put on their holiday
attire--passable enough as far as the men are concerned, but consisting
mainly on the women's behalf in an ugly black cloth square-waisted
dress, and a black felt broad-brimmed hat, with large gold tassels
lying on the brim. After Mass the Bavarian national hymn was sung to
the familiar strains of our own.
All seemed gay and glad without. I returned to the primitive rambling
inn; everyone was gone to take his or her part in the Kufstein idea
of a holiday. There were three entrances, and three staircases;
I took a wrong one, and in trying to retrace my steps passed a room
through the half-open door of which I heard a sound of moaning, which
arrested me. I could not find it in my heart to pass on. I pushed
the door gently aside, and discovered a grey-haired old man lying
comfortlessly on the bed in a state of torpor. I laid him back in a
posture in which he could breathe more freely, opened his collar and
gave him air, and with the aid of one or two simple means soon brought
him back to consciousness. The room was barely furnished; his luggage
was a small bundle tied in a handkerchief, his clothes betokened that
he belonged to the respectable of the lower class. I was too desirous
to converse with a genuine Tirolean peasant to refuse his invitation
to sit down by his side. I had soon learnt his tale, which he seemed
not a little pleased to find had an interest for a foreigner.
His lot had been marked by severe trials. In early youth he had been
called to lose his parents; in later life, the dear wife who had
for a season clothed his home again with brightness and hope. In old
age he had had a heavier trial still. His only child, the son whom
he had reared in the hope that he would have been the staff of his
declining years, whom he had brought up in innocence in childhood,
and shielded from knowledge of evil in early youth, had gone from him,
and he knew not where to find him. The boy had always had a fancy for
a roving adventurous life, but it had been his hope to have kept him
always near him, free from the contamination of great cities.
I asked if it was not the custom in these parts for young men to go
abroad and seek employment where it was more highly paid, and come
back and settle on their earnings. But he shook his head proudly. It
was so in Switzerland, it was so in some few valleys of Tirol, and the
poor Engadeiners supplied all the cities of Europe with confectioners;
but his son had no need to tramp the world in search of fortune. But
what had made him most anxious was, that the night before his son
left some wild young men had passed through the village. They were
bold and uproarious, and his fear was that his boy might have been
tempted to join them. He did not know exactly what their game was,
but he had an idea they were gathering recruits to join the lawless
Garibaldian bands in their attempts upon the Roman frontier. With
their designs he was confident his son had no sympathy. If he had
stopped to consider them, he would have shrunk from them with horror;
and it was his dread that his spirited love of danger and excitement
had carried him into a vortex from which he might by-and-by be longing
to extricate himself in vain. It was to pray that the lad might be
guided aright that he made this pilgrimage up the Thierberg--no easy
journey for one of his years. He had come across hill and valley from
a village of which I forget the name, but situated near Sterzing.
'But Sterzing itself is a place of pilgrimage,' I said, glad to turn to
account my scanty knowledge of the sacred places of the country. 'Why
did you come all this way?'
'Indeed is Sterzing,' he replied, 'a place of benedictions. It is the
spot where Sterzing, our first hermit, lived, and left his name to our
town. But this is the spot for those who need penance. There, in that
place,' and as I followed the direction of his hand I saw through the
low lattice window the lofty elevation of the Thierberg like a phantom
tower, enveloped in mist, standing out against the clear sky beyond,
and wondered how his palsied limbs had carried him up the steep. 'In
that place, in olden time, lived a true penitent. Once it was a lordly
castle, and he to whom it belonged was a rich and honoured knight;
but on one occasion he forgot his knightly honour, and with false
vows led astray an unthinking maiden of the village. Soon, however,
the conviction of his sin came back to him clear as the sun's light,
and without an hour's hesitation he put it from him. To the girl he
made the best amends he could by first leading her to repentance,
then procuring her admission to a neighbouring convent. But for
him, from that day the lordly castle became as a hermit's cell,
the sound of mirth and revelry and of friendly voices was hushed
for ever. The memory of his own name even he would have wiped out,
and would have men call him only, as they do to the present day,
'der Büsser'--the Penitent. And so many has his example brought to
this shrine in a spirit of compunction, that the Church has endowed
it with the indulgence of the Portiuncula.'
What a picture of Tirolese faith it was! Instead of setting in motion
the detective police, or the telegraph-wire, or the second column
of the 'Times,' this old man had come many miles in the opposite
direction from that his child was supposed to have taken, to bring
his burden and lay it before a shrine he believed to have been made
dear to heaven by tears of penance in another age, and there commend
his petition to God that He might bring it to pass, accepting the
suffering as a merited chastisement in a spirit of sincere penitence!
He was feeling better, and I rose to go. He pressed my hand in
acknowledgment of my sympathy, and I assured him of it. It was not a
case for more substantial charity; I had gathered from his recital
that he had no lack of worldly means. I only strove at parting to
kindle a ray of hope. I said after all it might not be so bad as he
imagined; his boy had been well brought up, and might perhaps be
trusted to keep out of the way of evil. It was thoughtless of him
not to seek his father's blessing and consent to his choice of an
adventurous career, but it might be he had feared his opposition,
and that he had no unworthy reason for concealing his plans. There
was at least as much reason to hope as to despond, and he must look
forward to his coming back, true to the instincts of his mountain home,
wiser than he had set out.
His pale blue eye glistened, and he gasped like one who had seen a
vision. 'Ay! just so! Just so it appeared to me when I was on the
Thierberg this morning! And now, in case my weak old heart did not
see it clearly enough, God, in His mercy, has sent you to expound
the thing more plainly to me. Now I know that I am heard.'
Poor old man! I shuddered lest the hope so strongly entertained
should prove delusive in the end. I may never know the result; but
I felt that at all events as he was one who took all things at God's
hands, nothing could, in one sense, come amiss; and for the present,
at least, I saw that he went down to his house comforted.
I strolled along the street, and, possessed with the type of the
Tirolean peasant, as I received it from this old man, I conceived a
feeling of deeper curiosity for all whom I met by the way. I thought
of them as of men for whom an unseen world is a reality; who estimate
prayer and sacraments and the intercession of saints above steam-power
and electricity. At home one meets with one such now and then, but to
be transported into a whole country of them was like waking up from
a long sleep to find oneself in the age of St. Francis and St. Dominic.
Whatever faults the Tirolese may have to answer for, they will not
arise from religion being put out of sight. No village but has its
hillside path marked with 'the Way of the Cross;' no bridge but carries
the statue of S. John Nepomucene, the martyr of the Confessional; no
fountain but bears the image of the local saint, a model of virtue
to the place; no lone path unmarked by its way-side chapel, or its
crucifix shielded from the weather by a rustic roof; no house but has
its outer walls covered with memories of holy things; no room without
its sacred prints and its holywater stoup. The churches are full of
little rude pictures, recording scenes in which all the pleasanter
events of life are gratefully ascribed to answers to prayer, while many
who cannot afford this more elaborate tribute hang up a tablet with the
words Hat geholfen ('He has helped me'), or more simply still, 'aus
Dankbarkeit.' Longfellow has written something very true and pretty,
which I do not remember well enough to quote; but most will call to
mind the verses about leaving landmarks, which a weary brother seeing,
may take heart again; and it is incalculable how these good people
may stir up one another to hope and endurance by such testimonies
of their trust in a Providence. Sometimes, again, the little tablets
record that such an one has undertaken a journey. 'N. N. reiset nach
N., pray for him;' and we, who have come so far so easily, smile at
the short distance which is thought worthy of this importance. The
Gott segne meine Reise--'May God bless my journey'--seems to come as
naturally to them, however, as 'grace before meat' with us. But most
of all, their care is displayed in regard to the dear departed. The
spot where an accident deprived one of his life is sacred to all. 'The
honourable peasant N. N. was run over here by a heavy waggon;'--'Here
was N. N. carried away by the waters of the stream;' with the unfailing
adjunct, 'may he rest in peace, let us pray for him;' or sometimes,
as if there were no need to address the recommendation to his own
neighbours, 'Stranger! pray for him.'
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, [47]
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. [48]
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. [49] 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. [50] 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.
That Nothburga contrived to feed the poor of a whole district,
in spite of her orders to the contrary, of course became in time a
ground of complaint for Ottilia. She had now a plausible reason for
stirring up the Knight Henry against her. He had always defended her,
out of regard for his parents' memory; but coming one evening past
the Leuchtenburg, at Ottilia's instigation, he met Nothburga with
her little burden, and asked her what she carried.
Here the adversary of the saints had prepared for her a great trial,
says the legend. She, in her innocence, told fairly and honestly
the import of her errand; but to the Knight's eyes, who had meantime
untied her apron, the contents appeared, the legend says, to be wood
shavings; and further, putting the wine-flask to his lips, it seemed
to him to contain soap-suds. To her charitable intention he had made
no objection, but at this, which appeared to him a studied affront,
he was furious. He would listen to no explanation, but, returning
at once to the castle, he gave Ottilia free and full leave to deal
with the offending handmaiden as she pleased. Ottilia readily put the
permission into effect by directing the castle guard to forbid her,
on her return, ever again to pass the threshold of the castle.
This blow told with terrible effect on the poor girl. During her
service at the castle both her parents had died; she had now no home
to resort to. Putting her trust in God, however, she retraced her
steps alone through the darkness, and found shelter in a cottage of
one of her clients. Her path was watched by the angels, who marked
the track with fair seeds; and even to this day the hill-side which
her feet so often pressed on her holy errand is said to be marked
with a peculiar growth of flowers.
The next day she applied to a peasant of Eben to engage her as a
field labourer. The peasant was exceedingly doubtful of her capacity
for the work after the comparatively delicate nature of her previous
mode of life. Her hardy perseverance and determination, aided by the
grace of God, on which she implicitly relied, overcame all obstacles,
and old Valentine soon found that her presence brought a blessing
on all his substance. She had been with him about a year, when one
day, being Saturday, he was very anxious to gather in the remainder
of his harvest before an apprehended storm, and desired Nothburga,
with the other reapers, to continue their labours after the hour of
eve, when the holy rest was reckoned to have commenced. Nothburga,
usually so obedient to his wishes, had the courage to refuse to
infringe the commandment of religion; and to manifest that the will
of God was on her side, showed him her sickle resting from labour,
suspended in the air. Valentine, convinced by the prodigy, yielded
to her representations, and her piety was more and more honoured by
all the neighbours.
Soon after this, Ottilia, in the midst of her health and strength,
was stricken with a dangerous illness. In presence of the fear of
death she remembered her harsh treatment of Nothburga, and sent
for her to make amends for the past. As the good girl reached her
bed-side she was just under the influence of a frightful attack of
fevered remorse. Her long golden hair waved in untended masses over
the pillow, like the flames of purgatory; her eyes glared like wheels
of fire. Unconscious of what was passing round her, and filled only
with her distempered fancies, she cried piteously: 'Drive away those
horrid beasts! don't let them come near me! And why do you let those
pale-faced creatures pursue me with their hollow glances? If I did
deny them food, I cannot help it now! Oh! keep those horrid swine
off me! If I did give them the portion of the poor, it is no reason
you should let them defile me and trample on me!'
Nothburga was melted with compassion, and her glance of sympathy
seemed to chase away the horrid vision. Come to herself, and calm
again, Otillia recognized her and begged her pardon, which we may well
believe she readily accorded; and shortly after, having reconciled
herself to God with true compunction, she fell asleep in peace. [51]
Henry proposed to Nothburga to come and resume her old post in the
castle, and moreover to add to it that of superintending the nurture
of his only boy. Nothburga gladly accepted his offer, but, in her
strict integrity, insisted on accepting no remission from the three
years' service under which she had bound herself to Valentine. This
concluded, she was received back with open arms at Castle Rottenburg,
whither she took with her one of Valentine's daughters to instruct
in household duties, that she might be meet to succeed her when her
time should come.
Days of peace on earth are not for the saints. Her fight was fought
out. The privations she had undergone in sparing her food for the poor,
and her subsequent exposure in the field, brought on an illness, under
which she shortly after sank. In conformity with her express desire,
her body was laid on a bier, to which two young oxen were yoked,
and left to follow their own course. The willing beasts tramped
straight away over hill and dale and water-course till they came to
the village of Eben, then consisting of but a couple of huts of the
poor tillers of the soil, and Valentine's homestead; now, a thriving
village, its two inns crowded every holiday with peasants, who make
their excursions coincide with a visit of devotion to the peasant
maiden's shrine. A small field-chapel of St. Ruprecht was then the only
place of devotion, but here next morning the body of the holy maiden
was found carefully laid at the foot of the altar, and here it was
reverently buried, and for centuries it has been honoured by all the
country round. [52] In 1434 the Emperor Maximilian, and Christopher,
Prince-Bishop of Brixen, built a church over the spot, of which
the ancient chapel served as the quire. In 1718 Gaspar Ignatius,
Count of Künigl, the then Prince-Bishop, had the remains exhumed,
and carried them with pomp to the neighbouring town of Schwatz, where
they were left while the church was restored, and an open sarcophagus
prepared for them to remain exposed for the veneration of the faithful,
which was completed in 1738. In 1838 a centenary festival was observed
with great rejoicing, and on March 27, 1862, the cycle of Nothburga's
honour was completed in her solemn canonization at Rome.
The lords of Rottenburg had had possession of this territory, and had
been the most powerful family of Tirol, ever since the eighth century;
one branch extending its sway over the valleys surrounding the Inn,
and another branch commanding the country bordering the Etsch;
Leuchtenburg and Fleims being the chief fortress-seats of these
latter. Their vast power greatly harassed the rulers of Tirol. In
every conflict between the native or Austrian princes and the Dukes of
Bavaria their influence would always turn the scale, and they often
seem to have exercised it simply to show their power. Their family
pride grew so high, that it became a proverb among the people. It was
observed that just during the period of the holy Nothburga's sojourn
in the castle the halo of her humble spirit seemed to exercise a charm
over their ruling passion. That was no sooner brought to a close than
it once more burst forth, and with intenser energy, and by the end
of a century more so blinded them that they ventured on an attempt
to seize the supreme power over the land. Friedrich mit der leeren
Tasche was not a prince to lose his rights without a worthy struggle;
and then ensued one which was a noteworthy instance of the protection
which royalty often afforded to the poor against the oppressions of a
selfish aristocracy in the Middle Ages. Friedrich was the idol of the
people: in his youth his hardy temperament had made him the companion
not only of the mountain huntsman, but even of the mountain hewer of
wood. Called to rule over the country, he always stood out manfully for
the liberties of the peasant and the burghers of the little struggling
communities of Tirol. The lords and knights who found their power
thereby restricted were glad to follow the standard of Henry VI.,
Count of Rottenburg, in his rebellions. Forgetting all patriotism in
his struggle for power, Henry called to his aid the Duke of Bavaria,
who readily answered his appeal, reckoning that as soon as, by aiding
Henry, he had driven Friedrich out, he would shortly after be able
to secure the prize for himself.
The Bavarian troops, ever rough and lawless, now began laying waste the
country in ruthless fashion. A Bavarian bishop, moved to compassion by
the sufferings of the poor people, though not of his own flock, pleaded
so earnestly with the Duke, that he made peace with Friedrich, who was
able to inflict due chastisement on Henry, for, powerful as he was,
he was no match for him as a leader. He fell prisoner into Friedrich's
hands, who magnanimously gave him his liberty; but, according to the
laws of the time, his lands and fiefs were forfeit. Though the spirit
of the high-minded noble was unbroken, the darling aim of his race
which had devolved upon him for execution was defeated; his occupation
gone, and his hopes quenched, he wandered about, the last of his race,
not caring even to establish himself in any of the fiefs which he held
under the Duke of Bavaria, and which consequently yet remained to him.
The history of Henry VI. of Rottenburg has a peculiarly gloomy and
fantastic character. Ambitious to a fault, it was one cause of his
ill success that he exercised himself in the nobler pursuits of
life rather than in the career of arms. Letters of his which are
still preserved show that he owed the ascendancy he exercised over
his neighbours quite as much to his strength of character and grasp
of mind as to his title and riches. No complaint is brought against
him in chronicles of the time of niggardliness towards the Church,
or of want of uprightness or patience as a judge; he is spoken of as
if he had learned to make himself respected as well as feared. But
he lived apart in a lofty sphere of his own, seldom mixing in social
intercourse, while his refined tastes prevented his becoming an adept
in the art of war. Friedrich, on the other hand, who was a hero in
the field by his bravery, was also the favourite of the people through
his frank and ready-spoken sympathy. Henry had perhaps, on the whole,
the finer--certainly the more cultivated--character, but Friedrich was
more the man of the time; and it was this doom of succumbing to one to
whom he felt himself superior which pressed most heavily on the last
of the Rottenburgers. What became of him was never known; consequently
many wild stories became current to account for his end: that he never
laid his proud head low at the call of death, but yet wanders on round
the precincts where he once ruled; that his untamable ambition made
him a prey to the Power of Evil, who carried him off, body and soul,
to the reward of the proud; that, shunning all sympathy and refusing
all assistance, he died, untended and unknown, in a spot far from
the habitations of men. It would appear most probable, however, that
his death, like his life, was a contrast with the habits of his age:
it is thought that, unable to bear his humiliation, he fell by his
own hand within a twelvemonth of his defeat.
The deliverance from this powerful vassal, and the falling in of his
domains, tended greatly to strengthen and consolidate Friederich's
rule over Tirol, and ultimately to render the government of the
country more stable, and more beneficial to the people.
Not long after Henry VI.'s disappearance a mysterious fire broke out
in the old castle on two separate occasions, laying the greater part
of it in ruins. But on each occasion it was noticed that the devouring
element, at the height of its fury, spared the little room which was
honoured as that in which the holy Nothburga had dwelt.
A gentler story about this neighbourhood is of a boy tending sheep
upon the neighbouring height, who found among some ruins a beautiful
bird's-nest. What was his surprise, on examining his treasure, to
find it full of broken shells which the fledglings had cast off and
left behind them, but shells of a most singular kind. Still greater
was his astonishment when, on showing them at home, his parents
told him they were no shells, but pieces of precious ore. The affair
caused the peasants to search in the neighbourhood, and led to the
discovery of one of those veins of metal the working of which brought
so great prosperity to Tirol in the fifteenth century, and which are
not yet extinct. Their discovery was always by accident, and often
by occasion of some curious incident, while the fact that such finds
were to be hit upon acted as a strong stimulant to the imagination
of a romantic and wonder-loving people, giving belief to all sorts
of fables to tell how the treasure was originally deposited, and how
subsequently it was preserved and guarded.