Personal narrative of an excursion to the hospice of the Great St. Bernard / By R. Hibbert Taylor.

  • Taylor, R. Hibbert.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Personal narrative of an excursion to the hospice of the Great St. Bernard / By R. Hibbert Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    vale to the frozen pinnacle of some rugged mountain, or ranges from the blue waters of lake Leman, and the smiling slopes of Lausanne and Yevay, to the wild heights of the Saleves and the eternal snows of Mont Blanc. Visions such as these, and the emotions which they cannot fail to awaken, must be seen and felt ere they can be appreciated; and the remembrance of them must endure while taste remains to enjoy what is beautiful and sublime, and memory lives to recal the scenes which have afforded us such delight. Those who, like myself, have been familiar with rural nature from their ear¬ liest years—who have lived and revelled amidst her ever-varying and yet un¬ cloying beauties—will best know how to appreciate and excuse this enthusiasm of feeling. T o those, if such there be, who can neither understand nor sympa¬ thise with such emotions, I can only say, -with regret, that constitution or circumstances have debarred them from some of the purest and most elevated enjoyments of which human nature is susceptible. Before entering upon the ascent to the Hospice, it may not be uninteresting to premise a brief sketch of the past history of this charitable foundation. Louis le Debonnaire, (814,) according to some, and Charlemagne, (768,) ac¬ cording to others, is said to have been the earliest founder of the Hospice. Bernard, uncle to the latter, and an illegitimate son of Charles Martel, led a division of the invading army of Charlemagne over the Great St. Bernard, when he went to attack Lombardy, and from him Saussure supposes that the present name of the pass may have been derived. But it is more probable that the Hospice owed its foundation and name to another Bernard, an illegitimate son of Pepin, -who inherited the kingdom of Italy from Charlemagne, and whose interest it would be to preserve a communication with Gaul by this passage of the Alps; and there is evidence that a monastery existed on the Great St. Bernard previous to the year 851, a period anterior to the reign of Alfred the Great of England, 872. Simler mentions that Hartman, who was made bishop of Lausanne at the above date, had been previously chief of this monastery, and styles him “ abbe and almoner of Mont Joux,” which was the ancient name of this pass, and is a Gallic corruption of Mons Jovis. Rivaz gives the name of even an earlier abbot of the convent, viz., Vultgaire, in 832, and it is stated in the annals of Bertin that Lothaire II. King of Lorraine, in 859, made a treaty with his brother, the Emperor Louis II. by which he ceded to him Geneva, Lausanne, and Sion, but specially reserved “ l’Hospital du St. Bernard,” which proves, as Saussure remarks, the im¬ portance of this passage and the name which it bore. The present Hospice was founded in 962, more than twenty years before the time of Hugh Capet, by Bernard, who was born of a noble family of Savoy, at the chateau of Meuthon, on the lake of Annecy, about midway between Geneva and Chambery. At an early age he determined to adopt an ecclesiastical life, and with this view w-ent to the city of Aoste, in Piedmont, of which he afterwards became archdeacon. The coincidence of his name with that of the monastery probably induced him to re-establish the Hospice on Mont St. Joux, over which he presided himself. He founded at the same time the Hospice on the little St. Bernard, bestowing upon both the name of his favourite Saint, Nicolas de Myre, and consigning them to his protection as tutelary patron. By degrees the name of the devotee came to be asso-