Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 2.djvu/127

115 ST. ODILIA 115 it as her own at Scberweiler. Aboat a year after, the child was given to a re- lation in the nnnnery of Beaume (Palma) in Franche Comte, or by some variants of the legend, she floated down the river to Beanme in a chest. She was christened by Everard, abbot of the newly -built monastery of Eberheim- Munster. According to Stadler, the story of SS. Everaid of Eatisbon and his brother St. Hidulph and the miracle by which they were bronght to Alsace, has been introduced by writers who did not know of the existence of the monastery of Eberheim. With the grace of baptism, Odilia received her sight and looked steadily at Everard, who said, '^ So, my child, may you look at me in the kingdom of heaven." Adalric and Bereswind had several other children. When their eldest son Hugh was grown np, he went and found his sister, and without asking his father's leave, he brought her home. The duke was very angry and struck Hugh a fatal blow ; but horrified at his own violence, he received his daughter and did penance for his crime. A nun who came from England was hired at the daily wages of a servant, to attend on Odilia. Soon her parents planned a marriage for her, and as they disregarded her protest against such a step, she fled from her home and crossed the Bhine. Her father pursued her and at last tracked her to a cleft in a rock, which closed upon her as he approached ; the place is said to be at Muntzbaoh, in Breisgau. She returned to her father's house, for the next incident in her history is that, in 686, Adalric met her one day carry- ing meal in an earthen dish, under her cloak, to make food for the poor. As ho had already begun to give alms and endowments for the good of his soul, he gave Odilia his castle of Hohenburg or Altitona, with all its lands and revenues, that she might make it into a nunnery. The hill of Hohenburg rises over 2,000 feet abruptly from the valley of the Rhine. It had a pre-christian wall round it, still called the heathen wall, and there was a plateau on the top, on which the monastery was built. In ten years the place was ready for habitation. She had a hundred and thirty nuns, amongst whom were three daughters of her brother Adelard, St. Eugenia (4) her successor, St. Attala, abbess of St. Stephen's at Strasburg, and St. Gun- DELiND. Odilia was very ascetic; she had a bear's skin for her bed. She had a special devotion to St. John the Bap- tist, because she had received her sight in baptism, and she purposed to build a little church in his honour, with a cell near it. While she was undecided about the spot, she went out one night with only her niece Eugenia. The Baptist appeared and showed her the site and the extent of the chapel. She began the building next day. She charged Eugenia not to tell any one of the appari- tion as long as Odilia lived. One day, during the building, a great cart of stones was coming up, and the driver lagged behind; the cart with its four oxen fell over the cliff, a height of seventy feet; the oxen picked them- selves up and drew their load safely up by the right road. The chapel was called the Miracle-chapel or St. John's House of Prayer, and there they kept the relics which St. Everard had pre- sented to her at her baptism. In the 7 th and 8th centuries there were frequent pilgrimages to Rome and to various shrines in other places, from Britain, Ireland and elsewhere, but Odilia's hill was so high and steep that very few of the pilgrims climbed up to seek her hospitality; so with the ap- proval of her community, she built a now house, called Nieder Hohenburg, and afterwards Niedermiinster, at the foot of the mountain, and here she en- tertained such numbers of pilcrrims that very soon the two chapels which Adalric built were too small for the concourse of persons who passed through the place, and she begged him to build a large church, which he did in 600. He and his wife died very soon afterwards. Odilia attended to them dutifully as long as they lived, and after their death, she prayed with many tears for their salvation. On the ground formerly oc- cupied by the garden, is the Zahren- caprlle, the chapel of tears, where the stone on which she knelt is shown with