Note 9 — Chapter V · NORTH TIROL—UNTERINNTHAL. (LEFT INN-BANK.)

It seems difficult to fix a date for the origin of this pilgrimage, one of the most ancient of Tirol. There is a record that in 992 a chapel was consecrated here to our Lady of Sorrows, by Albuin, Bishop of Brizen; but it was long before this9 that Rathold, a young nobleman of Aiblingen in Bavaria, ‘having learnt the hollowness of the joys his position promised him, made up his mind to forsake all, and live in the wilderness to God alone.’ He wandered on, shunning the smooth and verdant plains of his native lands, and the smiling fruitful amenities of the Innthal, till at last he found himself surrounded by wild solitudes in the valley of the Stallen; plunging into its depths, his eye alighted on the almost inaccessible Lampsenjock. Then choosing for his dwelling a peak, on which a few limes had found a ledge and sown themselves, he cut a little cave for his shelter in the rock beneath them, and there he lived and prayed. But after a time a desire came over him to visit the shrines of the mightiest saints; so he took up his pilgrim staff once more, and sped over the mountains and over the plains, till he had knelt at the limine Apostolorum, and pressed his lips upon the soil, fragrant with the martyr’s blood. Nor was his zeal yet satisfied. There was another Apostle the fame of whose shrine was great; and ‘a year and a day’ brought our pilgrim to S. Iago de Compostella. Then, having thus graduated in the school of the saints, he came back to his solitude under the lime-trees on the rock, to practise the lessons of Divine contemplation he had thus imbibed in the perfume of the holy places.