Mont Ste. Odile

I've made you a pretty collage to distract you from the fact that there aren't very many picture of Mont Ste. Odile because my camera stopped working half way through this visit:




Unfortunately I didn't discover this until a few days later, after I had been to Waldersbach to see Oberlin's house and to Colmar to see the Isenheim Altarpiece. So the above are the last digital pictures of France. Sigh.

This monastery/convent is on the peak of one of the mountains in the Vosges. It is named for St. Odile, who is the patron saint of Alsace and if the stories are true she was even Alsatian. Her first claim to fame was that she was born blind but gained her sigh upon baptism. Her last claim to fame was that after she died, her fellow nuns prayed her back to life. She told them how great the afterlife was, took communion and died again. Once her dad got over the fact that she was a girl and a saint, he built her this monastery/convent and something along those lines has been there ever since that 7th century structure, despite wars, reformation, and revolution. It's also apparently popular among the pilgrims.

My favorite story from its history has to do with bibliokleptomania. Apparently a Strasbourgeois school teacher and history hobbyist discovered in a Strasbourg University library an old map of the mont which revealed a secret passage leading to the monastic library. So he heads up to Mont Ste. Odile and finds the secret passage and the secret door and the library. But that's not enough - he takes a few manuscripts home with him. And he continues to do this over a two year period (2000-2002), stealing more than 1000 books and manuscripts. Now, the monks didn't know about the secret passage. But they did notice when whole bookshelves went missing. They changed the locks on the door. Three times. The redid the windows. They got a new door. The books seem just to disappear into thing air. Finally a police officer discovered the secret door in the library. So they put in a surveillance camera at the entrance to the passage and caught the guy as he was leaving with two suitcases full of books. When they went back to his house they found the rest of the rare books and manuscripts, as he had kept them all for himself and not sold a single one. Don't worry, the abbot forgave him and said he could even use the library, if he comes through the front door.

I am not that cool. I did do some research at the Strasbourg University library, but I none of it involved secret passage ways. So my Austrian and I had to content ourselves with enjoying the stunning views and Catholic imagery.

My Austrian also wanted to visit there so we could hike around the mountain a bit. We picked out the "Grotto of the Druids" on the trail map. I'm not convinced we found it, but we did see part of an ancient wall, termed with the most sensitivity the "Pagan Wall", which may be pre-historic or may be from the 7th century. We also found where a plane crashed in the early 1990s. And of course we found old Germans trekking their way through the mountain complete with hiking sticks. There is a restaurant and hotel at Mont Ste. Odile for the weary pilgrim.