Holiness Tried Yet Triumphant

The notion of a Church Militant, tested and tempered by multiple ordeals, had marked the Counter-Reformation propagandistic campaign from the start. In rituals like Corpus Christi, state and Church had imaged Christian history as continually embattled and the Eucharist as a source of unity that emerged ever victorious from its skirmishes with the "godless." The preacher Johann Nass, the hagiographer Laurentius Surius, and the shrine propagandist Martin Eisengrein had each used this tragicomic emplotment to treat ecclesiastical history, the saints, the sacraments, and the numinous locus . Each had stressed the visibility and tangibility of Roman tradition. Emerging from frequent crises, trials, and heresies, ecclesia militans offered its unity and miracles as witness to its divine presence. For the propagandists who dedicated themselves to the renewal of specific shrines in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, tales involving cultic crisis and victory were to become the single most important means of reviving, rehabilitating, and defending their devotions.

The images of ordeal and triumph from which numerous such legends were eventually to be forged shared themes with late medieval Bavarian religion. The mid fourteenth and late fifteenth centuries had seen an increase in pilgrimages to places in the countryside that justified and celebrated the persecution of the Jews. Promoted to give grounds for crusades against this increasingly marginalized group, myths about Jewish host desecration had dominated as an explanation for these cults. In the numerous late medieval stories of crimes against the host, Jews were charged with buying consecrated wafers from Christians and torturing them in ways that recalled the Crucifixion: driving nails through them, hammering them on an anvil, or trampling them under foot-topoi that raised the specter of Christ's torture and sacrifice. As a result of

this Jewish crime, these stories noted, the Eucharist would begin to bleed. To conceal what they had done, the Jews would cast the host into a fiery furnace, but it would not be consumed. Finally, in desperation, they might throw the sacred objects into a fiver or well—which would immediately turn to blood. They could not hide their crime; soon it would be discovered and avenged through a pogrom. In Bavaria, sites of alleged crimes against the host often grew to be enormously successful pilgrimage shrines, and the Eucharist's desecration, its "miracle" of discovery, and the subsequent punishment of the perpetrators became the focus of devotions that memorialized, through reenactment, the crucifixional victory.

Widespread in the decades before the Reformation, Bavaria's Bleeding Host pilgrimages illustrate how clerical and lay perceptions concerning thaumaturgy and miracles diverged. No clerically maintained miracle testimonies survive at these shrines; in other words, the Bleeding Host devotion flourished largely without the lure of clerically promoted miracles. Certainly, the burghers and peasants who came to these sites may have attributed intercessions to these "holy hosts," and evidence suggests that they did. After narrating the tale of Jewish desecration of the Eucharist at Deggendorf, for example, the author of a 1520 poetic ballad about the shrine alleged that this "miracle" had been followed by other wonders of healing in the village. A broadside promoting the Passau host pilgrimage in the late fifteenth century, moreover, concluded by depicting the altar of the new shrine draped with votive images, gifts traditionally presented to the saints to give thanks for a miracle.^[21] But at neither place did the clergy maintain records of these testimonies.

Various and complex factors underlay this clerical reluctance to link Bleeding Host pilgrimages to a tradition of contemporary intercession. Unlike wonder-working images or relics, the host was not a mere man-made object that served as a channel between God and human beings. It was God and hence could not be seen to intercede on people's behalf in the same ways that the saintly image, the tumulus, or the relic did. To have promoted the Bleeding Host as a source of thaumaturgy and intercession would have threatened the

[21] See Hsia, Myth of Ritual Murder , pp. 50-56.

very uniqueness of the divine presence that resided in the eucharistic wafer.

In attempting to maintain the Bleeding Host cult free from miracles, however attractive they might be, the Bavarian clergy were also reacting to the widespread magical use of the Eucharist in late medieval Europe. Ground up and sprinkled on fields, sewn into childbeds, or placed in charms and amulets, the host had enjoyed a long tradition as a magical agent. Yet even as these necromantic uses of the Eucharist continued unabated, fears about Jewish magic steadily intensified.^[22] To promote miracles worked in conjunction with a Bleeding Host shrine threatened not only to make the Eucharist into a mere conduit of grace; it also raised the dangerous possibility that those faithful who visited these sites might associate the host's efficacy with magic, especially the magic of the Jews.

In Bavaria, the pilgrimages to the Bleeding Host shrines at Deggendorf and Passau appear to have endured relatively intact from the later Middle Ages through the Counter-Reformation. Although the clergy at these sites did not record miracles, it is clear that their devotions were nourished on pervasive suspicion and hatred of the Jews and the perception that viewing the tortured Eucharist conveyed a particularly immediate and potent salvific grace.^[23] Because these hosts were revered like relics, entering into a site of eucharistic desecration brought the pilgrim directly into the presence of Christ.

The first of these shrines, Deggendorf, had its origins in a wave of pogroms that occurred in South Germany in the mid-fourteenth century. In 1337, the Christians of the town exterminated the Jewish population, after which they followed the common practice of erecting a church on the site of the razed ghetto to commemorate their "victory." Dedicating their new chapel to the "body of Christ," Deggendorfers now set about sanctifying the site. Over the years they acquired various indulgences for their church, but it was not until 1401—more than sixty years later—that one was issued citing

[22] Ibid.; Browe, Die eucharistischen Wunder des Mittelalters ; and idem, "Die Eucharistie als Zaubermittel im Mittelalter," Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 20 (1930): 134-154.

[23] Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast , pp. 53-54, reviews the development of the visual veneration of the host in the Middle Ages.

the crime of host desecration as the cause for the 1337 pogrom. Offered to pilgrims on the memorial of the destruction of the Jewish community (from September 30 to October 4 each year), this indulgence became known in the later Middle Ages as the Gnad , or "grace," and the pilgrimage to the church in which it was available acquired the same name.^[24]

In the case of Deggendorf, the legend of the desecration of the host was apparently first applied as a justification and explanation for the Gnad 's developing devotion only decades after the extirpation of the town's Jews. By the late fifteenth century, however, tales of eucharistic torture had acquired an independent ability to inspire and sustain persecution. At Passau in 1478, for example, accusations of violence enacted on the Eucharist served not as after-the-fact legitimation, but as the very cause for a pogrom. Arrested for theft, Christoph Eisengreishamer, a Christian servant, confessed to having sold hosts to the town's Jews. Passau's magistrates reacted immediately by arresting and questioning a number of Jews and extracting confessions from them. In the wake of the resulting executions, expulsions, and forced conversions, the town's synagogue was demolished and a new church erected, to which a pilgrimage ensued.

Both Deggendorf and Passau remained popular devotions in the early sixteenth century, and a rich lore of oral tales grew up around each, with all the common motifs—as seen in the account of an anonymous poet-chronicler who visited Deggendorf around 1520. He narrated with scrupulous attention to detail the various tortures the Jews had worked on the wafers—sold to them in this instance by a Christian woman. They had scratched it with thorns and punctured it with an awl to make it bleed before throwing it into an oven. There it remained unconsumed by the flames while a vision of the Christ child appeared in the fire. As these tortures were occurring, however, a sentinel standing guard at the town's gates heard the Virgin Mary bemoaning the fate of her son. He alerted the town fathers, and Christian society soon rose up to avenge the murder by exterminating the Jews.^[25]

[24] Rothkrug, "Holy Shrines, Religious Dissonance, and Satan," pp. 282-283.

[25] Von Tegkendorf das geschicht wie die Iuden das hailig sacrament haben zugericht [Augsburg: S. Otmar, 1520]; cited in Hsia, Myth of Ritual Murder , p. 56.

The adornments of this narrative—including the betrayal of the Christian community and the Eucharist by a woman, the multiple tortures of the Eucharist, the vision of the Christ child, and the discovery of the crime aided by the Virgin and sentinel—linked Deggendorf's Gnad to other sites, where the same incidents had been alleged. By the late fifteenth century, a unified discourse had emerged concerning crimes against the host; indeed, many places now shared virtually the identical legend.^[26] Yet despite the similar motifs and topoi, their purpose was not to alleviate potential doubt or to erase the reality of the crime. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, it was generally believed that these events had actually occurred. In accepting stock details, pilgrims to one site could merge what had happened there to a lineage of other crimes throughout Germany.

In the course of the sixteenth century, however, an increasingly critical—and largely Protestant—scrutiny of Hebraic rites and texts raised serious questions about the allegations of Jewish host desecration, which sometimes found their way into the ongoing Protestant-Catholic polemic over miracles.^[27] The widely distributed pamphlets of Hieronymus Rauscher, Lutheran court preacher in the Upper Palatinate, for example, recounted a number of traditional legends about eucharistic crimes, transforming them into cases of clerical black magic. For Rauscher and other Protestant polemicists, Bleeding Host "miracles" became testimonies to the frauds, lies, and "magic" that the Roman clergy and Satan had worked to delude simple people.^[28]

Nonetheless, in Bavaria knowledge of the crime against the host remained common at every layer of society. In a show trial held in Munich during 1600, Wittelsbach state officials persecuted the Pappenheimer family, itinerant beggars and cesspool cleaners, for the crime of witchcraft. Under torture, one family member confessed without prompting to having stolen and sold hosts to Straubing's Jews. For the state's officials, the fact that this admission came from a group of marginalized, "dishonorable" persons lent it credibility,

[26] Hsia, Myth of Ritual Murder , pp. 54-56;Browe, "Die Hostienschändungen der Juden"; and Johannes Heuser, "'Heilig Blut,'" pp. 10-13.

[27] Hsia, Myth of Ritual Murder , p. 147.

[28] Schenda, "Hieronymus Rauscher."

and ducal emissaries were immediately dispatched to investigate the Straubing Jews. Insufficient evidence, however, was discovered to support the claim.^[29] Similar results obtained in subsequent investigations of Jewish host desecration, yet fear and hatred of the Jews persisted, and allegations of eucharistic torture continued to be made sporadically, even into the twentieth century.^[30] When the charge appeared in early modern Bavaria, however, it was brought before a state judicial bureaucracy that was more scrupulous about evidence than medieval authorities had been. One result of this skepticism was that because the tale lacked de jure recognition, few new Bleeding Host pilgrimages appeared. Even so, both the Wittelsbach state and the clergy worked to sustain the memory of the state's preexisting medieval host cults by publicizing them systematically. The eucharistic pilgrimage—like the Corpus Christi procession before it—was expanded and its rituals elaborated. The legend of the Bleeding Host was now conflated with the contemporary Protestant abandonment of the orthodox Eucharist, and both were used as a visible testimony to Catholic truth against ongoing attacks by both Jews and Protestants.

It was with a dual purpose—to polemicize against Protestant attacks on eucharistic legends and to proclaim the truth of these tales to the Catholic devout—that the Wittelsbach court preacher Johann Rabus set about treating the origins of the cults of Deggendorf and Passau. In 1583, he preached a sermon before Duke Wilhelm and his court on the Bleeding Host shrine at Deggendorf. Then, at Wilhelm's prompting (and likely with his financial support), Rabus published an expanded version of his remarks entitled A Short, True, and Essential Report Concerning the Revered, Widely Famous, and Eminent Holy Sacraments at Deggendorf and Passau (1584).^[31] Rabus had participated in the great annual pilgrimage, the Deggendorf Gnad , on two occasions, and in his pilgrimage book he reports that the procession was still carried on by the villagers of the region (though alas, no documents exist to allow us to assess the intensity

[29] Kunze, Highroad to the Stake , pp. 155-160.

[30] The last allegation of Jewish host desecration in Bavaria was reported in 1926; see Browe, "Die Hostienschändung der Juden," p. 178.

[31] Johann Rabus, Kurtzer, warhaffter und gründtlicher Bericht von dem hoch und weitberhümbten wundersame H. Sacrament zu Deckendorff und Passaw (Munich: A. Berg, 1584). The Berg publishing house was supported financially by the Wittelsbach state.

of this traffic at this time). Through his sermons on the subject and his printed defense of Deggendorf and Passau, however, Rabus was clearly attempting to promote these shrines to a broader audience. As he states in the dedication, he intended his pilgrimage book not only to defend these cults, but also to "edify" those who made the pilgrimage. As in the case of other Bavarian Bleeding Host shrines, the Wittelsbach court preacher did not join the Eucharist at either shrine to a contemporary tradition of thaumaturgic and intercessory miracles; rather, he concentrated on narrating the story of the host's torture at the hands of Jews and the Christian discovery and punishment of the crime. In this way, the publicity he crafted for Deggendorf and Passau departed from the narrative conventions of late medieval accounts of these shrines.

Rabus devotes the majority of his Short, True, and Essential Report to the Deggendorf shrine. Instead of beginning with the alleged Jewish crime against the host, however, the preacher lodges his treatment of Deggendorf's origins within a long prologue and the broader context of a crisis in Christian history: the political rivalry between the Wittelsbach emperor Louis the Bavarian and Pope John XXII during the first half of the fourteenth century, which eventually resulted in the pope's deposition of Louis as emperor.^[32] Even as this famous dispute was unfolding, Christianity, already divided by political and religious controversies, was weakening and would soon be subjected to renewed Jewish attacks. During the summer of 1327, ten years before the Deggendorf host crime, a fiery comet appeared in the skies over the empire, a sign to Jews of the imminent arrival of their Messiah. Because they believed that their salvific prophet would not arrive without the collapse of Christian society, the Jews began to practice their age-old crimes: they poisoned wells, committed ritual murders of Christian boys, and tortured the host. Thus, in Rabus's account the events at Deggendorf are transposed from the level of a local incident similar to ones experienced in many places, to that of a Pan-European, decade-long offensive waged by Jews against Christianity.

After relating the stories of Jewish crimes against the host and the resultant "miracles" at Deggendorf and Passau, Rabus concen-

[32] Ibid., fols. avi ff. He cites as his source for these observations the humanist Johannes Aventinus's popular Bavarian Chronicle .

trates his polemical energies on rehabilitating Catholic miracles from the Protestant charge of diabolic magic. Here, anti-Semitism and anti-Protestantism merge into a single discourse. For the court preacher, the reformers become "Pharisees," whose attitude toward true Christianity and its Eucharist is the same as that of the Jews. Citing a number of ancient and medieval theologians, he labors to prove the reality of Christ's continuing power to perform miracles through his presence in the Eucharist. As is typical of Protestant and Catholic polemic alike, he portrays his opponents as deluded by Satan into attributing Christ's wonders to the Archfiend himself. What is interesting about Rabus's argument, however, is the predominance of eating imageries. The devil, for instance, "nourishes" then "spits out" lies and slanders against the honor of the Church's miracles. Certainly the act of eating was central to the Eucharist, and it is not surprising to find the preacher employing its dichotomous opposite of spitting out to treat Protestant attacks on the eucharistic miracle. Through employment of this literary device, he reduces Lutherans and Calvinists to those whose denial of the simple truth of the tortured host is comparable to a lack of mastery over one of the most elemental of human functions: eating. By attacking the veracity of these Bleeding Host miracles, Protestants become "devourers" whose gluttony causes them to eat away at the truth of Christ's miracles, reducing them to demonic slanders.^[33]

In 1604, the priest and theologian Johann Sartorius published another pilgrimage book, Memorial of the Miracles of God —though here he confines himself to relating just the myth of Deggendorf, in particular its host miracle.^[34] The story closely follows the outlines of

[33] Johann Rabus, Kurtzer, warhaffter und gründtlicher Bericht , esp. p. avi; the observation is especially interesting in light of the recent studies of Caroline Bynum in Holy Feast and Holy Fast .

[34] Johann Sartorius, Memoria mirabilium Dei. Das ist, Von dem hochwürdigen Sacrament deß wahren Fronleichnambs Christ so Anno M. CCC. XXXVII. zu Deckendorf in Bayrn von den Juden hochfrävenlicher Weiß centiret, seythero daselbst auffgehalten und sambt andern wurdigen Heiligthumb mit Andacht besuchet und verehret wirdt (1604: 2 eds.). The first edition was printed at Ingolstdt; see Stalla, Ingolstädter Buchdruck , p. 17, no. 31. I quote from the second edition, printed by Simon Haan at Straubing. Biographic details concerning Sartorius, including his dates of birth and death, do not exist. The title page lists the author as "Ioannem Sartorivm, Arenspergensem, H. Schrifft Licentiaten, Dechant und Pfarrherr daselbsten."

Rabus's book, but rather than locating the Deggendorf eucharistic crime within the context of Christian divisiveness and Jewish offensive, Sartorius turns to the entire corpus of host legends retold in the later Middle Ages. In 1592, the Cologne cleric Valentin Leucht had collected and edited these tales into a compendium, An Illustrated Mirror of the Holy Eucharist , a sort of comprehensive guide to the Church's most "miraculous" hosts.^[35] Drawing upon this source, Sartorius styles what occurred at Deggendorf into an ongoing testimony to a tradition characterized by Jewish hatred and tortures of the Christian God. By multiplying instances of eucharistic desecration in general he labors to verify systematically the reality of the Jewish misdeed that occurred in the Lower Bavarian town.

Focusing on Deggendorf in particular, Sartorius begins by relating the earliest history of the town's major churches and monastic foundations.^[36] Like Martin Eisengrein's historical prologue to Our Lady at Altötting , this section offers a kind of parallel biblical narrative. Showing how the apostolic succession was established in Deggendorf and its vicinity, Sartorius uses this foundation to explain the town's consequent "miracle" of the Bleeding Host. In successive chapters he treats the appearance of the Jews at Deggendorf and alleges a variety of crimes they worked there before their most heinous one: the eucharistic desecration itself.^[37] The priest then turns his attention to the latter crime, granting considerable space to each "horror" the Jews enacted on the Christian God. To enhance the drama of this account, he includes separate short chapters for each of their tortures. One, for instance, describes how the Deggendorf Jews drove holes through the host with a sharp awl, another the host being scratched with thorns, another the host's internment in the fiery baker's oven, and so forth.^[38]

Like Rabus's account, Sartorius's pilgrimage book follows the story of the Deggendorf Jews to its gruesome conclusion and draws essentially the same message from the tale. Both rely on latent Jewish hatred, not only to defend their pilgrimages, but also to

[35] Valentin Leucht, Speculum illustrium miraculorum SS. Eucharistiae (Mainz, 1592, 1598, and 1606).

[36] Sartorius, Memoria mirabilium Dei , pp. 9-30.

[37] Ibid., pp. 31-54.

[38] Ibid., pp. 54-98.

make them into a self-conscious affirmation of Roman truth against the "lies and deceits" of Judaism and Protestantism, which are now fused into a single tradition of hate.

To answer the charges of Protestants against cults like those of Deggendorf and Passau, moreover, Rabus and Sartorius wove their tales of eucharistic desecration and triumph into a broader context. For Rabus, the origins of the devotion still visible at Deggendorf lay in a period when Christianity was internally divided owing to the struggles between emperor and pope. As a consequence of the Church's turmoil, the Jews had moved to attack the host. Today in yet another period of strife, his polemic warned, the offensive against the Roman Eucharist was continuing in the guise of the Protestant heresies. His work thus urged its readers to remain faithful to an eternal visible truth that had been and was still being assaulted by various heretical and demonically inspired groups. For Sartorius, the truth of the incident at Deggendorf was demonstrated by a verifiable lineage of similar crimes worked in almost every European country. In citing Valentin Leucht's eucharistic compendium, he hoped to convince his readers through a kind of protohistorical method. Piling incident upon incident, and recounting the Deggendorf crime of eucharistic desecration in particular in minute detail, he hoped to gather a wealth of detail too massive to deny.

Both authors saw the mystery of their shrines residing in the cults' great episodic reenactment of the Crucifixion; by throwing into relief the "enormous" events that led to the shrine's founding, each also attempted to maintain his cult free from the appeal of a tradition of thaumaturgy and intercession. The implicit argument was that such extraordinary eucharistic miracles did not warrant a subsequent legacy. For Rabus and Sartorius, the purpose of pilgrimages to Deggendorf and Passau, among other sites, was rather to memorialize a crucifixional torture and victory and to celebrate Catholicism's prowess in repulsing onslaughts against its truths.

Without a doubt, the two books represent dismal episodes in the Bavarian Counter-Reformation's propagandistic campaign. Yet it is at least comforting to realize that such exertions were now necessary because the myth of eucharistic desecration had begun to be subjected to criticism. By the late sixteenth century, Deggendorf's and Passau's Bleeding Host legends needed to be carefully tended

and nurtured by clerical promotion if they were to grant continuing meaning to annual rites like the Gnad .

No case so vividly illustrates the Bavarian Counter-Reformation's deliberate fostering of pilgrimages redolent with the imagery of crisis and resolution as that of St. Benno's shrine in Munich. The saint, an eleventh-century bishop of Meissen, had excited controversy from the earliest years of the Reformation. In the late fifteenth century, his cult had blossomed at Meissen, and the episcopal government and the princes of Ducal Saxony had lobbied Rome intensely for his canonization. In 1523, when their efforts finally succeeded, the bishop of Meissen and the Saxon prince planned to use their newly canonized saint to counter the early Reformation movement in their region. Publicity for the rites surrounding Benno's elevation inspired Luther and other early Protestant pamphleteers to issue tracts denouncing the cult. These attacks proved futile, however, and the shrine, still sponsored by its prince and bishop, retained its notoriety during the 1520s and 1530s. Then in 1539, just hours after the death of the last Catholic Saxon prince, a crowd entered Meissen's cathedral, tore down the shrine, and threw its shards into the Elbe. Meissen's cathedral canons, however, having foreseen this attack, had already spirited their saint's relics to a nearby monastery for safekeeping.^[39]

Here matters remained for over thirty years. In 1572, several Catholic princes approached the episcopal government at Meissen, requesting to transfer the saint's remains to more congenial locations. After four years of negotiations, the bishop awarded the saint's remains to the Bavarian duke.^[40] Dispatching his emissaries to Meissen, the duke had the relics secretly taken to the Bavarian border; they were met by a triumphal procession that carried them on to the duchy's capital, where their arrival was celebrated as a Wittelsbach victory in the ongoing war against heresy. In those same years, of course, Albrecht and his state officials were redou-

[39] Robert Böck, "Die Verehrung des hl. Benno in München," Bayerisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde , 1958, pp. 53-54; Martin Luther, Widder den neuwen Abgott und allten Teuffel der zu Meyssen soll erhoben werden (Wittenberg, 1524), in Luther Werke , 1st ser., 15:170ff. The pompous ceremony of elevation is described in Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities , p. 43.

[40] Böck, "Die Verehrung des hl. Benno," p. 56.

bling their efforts to expel Protestants from Munich. Hence the arrival of this saintly thaumaturge must have been seen by the city's Protestant burghers as yet another sign of the direction in which both state policy and religious affinities were moving in the capital.

Following the welcoming festivities, Benno's remains were housed in the Wittelsbach family chapel, where they remained for several years like a "Counter-Reformation trophy."^[41] In 1580, however, Duke Wilhelm moved the relics to the city's parish, the Church of Our Lady (Frauenkirche). At the time, both the Wittelsbach duke and the canons of this church were working to have the capital of the local diocese moved from Freising to Munich. In so doing, Wilhelm hoped to wrest control from the sometimes obstreperous, aristocratic cathedral canons at Freising. Benno's placement in the city's parish church and his subsequent naming as patron of Munich (fig. 12) were clearly intended to bolster Wittelsbach episcopal ambitions.^[42]

From that time well into the eighteenth century, in fact, Benno was to be employed for numerous pious, polemical, and political ends. In 1596, having failed to secure episcopal status for Munich, Wilhelm began a massive building program at the Church of Our Lady. Finally completed in 1623 during the reign of Wilhelm's successor, Maximilian I, this redecoration had as its focal point the so-called Benno Arch, which until its demolition in the mid-nineteenth century dwarfed everything else inside the church.^[43]

Symbolizing the triumph of the Christian relic cult over the "lies and deceits" of Protestantism, Wilhelm's artistic program at Our Lady aimed to fulfill a variety of ends for the Wittelsbach state as well. The Benno Arch was to be a national shrine and, much like the medieval French chapel of St. Denis, a kind of dynastic showcase,

[41] I have drawn the appropriate phrase gegenreformatorische Trophäe from Karin Berg, "Der ehemalige 'Bennobogen' der Münchner Frauenkirche," in Um Glauben und Reich. Kurfürst Maximilian I , ed. Hubert Gläiser (Munich, 1980), 1:312-317.

[42] J. Kirsch, "Beiträige zur Geschichte des hi. Benno Bischofs von Meissen (1066-1106)" (Ph.D. diss., Munich, 1911), pp. 63ff. The canons of the Church of Our Lady were also concerned to protect the status of their own parish against the then-rising position of the Jesuits within the spiritual life of Munich; see Heinz Jürgen Sauermost, "Zur Rolle St. Michaels im Rahmen der Wilhelminisch-Maximilianischen Kunst," in Gläiser (ed.), Um Glauben und Reich 1:167-174, esp. p. 170.

[43] A complete history of the building program is described in Karin Berg's "Der Bennobogen der Münchner Frauenkirche: Geschichte, Rekonstruktion und Analyse der frühbarocken Binnenchoranlage" (Ph.D. diss., University of Munich, 1979).

recalling to visitors some of the ruling family's most important members. Underwritten with funds from the Wittelsbachs, the city of Munich, and other towns and monasteries throughout Bavaria, the structure covered the church's presbytery and, beneath it, a newly remodeled Wittelsbach mausoleum.^[44] In placing the dynasty's graves close to Benno's relics, Wilhelm and his successor, Maximilian, adopted the traditional practice of burying their dead with a saint (ad sanctos ). In the Middle Ages, such burials were believed to place the deceased within the protective "odor of sanctity" that emanated from the corpses of the saints. These Bavarian dukes certainly desired the benediction of their new saint, even in their graves. Perhaps more importantly, however, the new Wittelsbach mausoleum, with its rescued saintly patron, glorified the dynasty's consecrated role as a "defender" of the faith.

Among the graves of ancestors buried in the church, that of the notorious German emperor Louis the Bavarian was granted primacy of place directly beneath the structure. Attended by angels, Louis's huge bronze catafalque far outshone St. Benno's opulent yet life-sized reliquary. Indeed, the edifice surrounding the emperor's resting place created a frame that memorialized him as a kind of "unofficial saint." In presenting Louis to worshippers in this manner, the Counter-Reformation had in fact effected a most creative rewriting of the past, for during his tenure as emperor Louis had waged war against Rome and been deposed by the pope. The "shrine," in short, reflected the increasing determination of the Wittelsbachs to define the counter-reformational program according to their own pious and political needs. By placing their family members within the "odor of sanctity," Wilhelm and Maximilian hoped to appropriate the trappings of sacral kingship and create a visible buttress to their increasingly determined attempts to dominate the religious practices of their territory.^[45]

For the Wittelsbach dynasty, Benno was a kind of sanctifying agent; his consecrated life and dramatic rescue from Protestant

[44] On the funding for the Munich Bennobogen see Böck, "Die Verehrung der hi. Benno," p. 60.

[45] Berg, "Der ehemalige 'Bennobogen,'" pp. 313-314; Peter Bernhard Steiner, "Der gottselige Fürst und die Konfessionalisierung Altbayerns," in Gläser (ed.), Um Glauben und Reich 1:253, 258; and Wolfgang Braunfels, "Cuius Regio, Eius Ars," in ibid., pp. 133-140.

Meissen reflected and underscored the Munich princes' role as defenders of Catholicism. Yet the saint's "official" life also contained strains and themes uniquely well suited to the spiritual tastes of Munich's clergy and laity. During the eleventh-century Investiture Controversy, for instance, Benno had remained true to the Roman pope over the demands of the German emperor.^[46] During the early Reformation, the attacks on his cult lent the saint an even greater notoriety and made the protection of his devotion into a self-conscious affirmation of Catholic truth vis-à-vis Lutheranism and Calvinism. While the imposing monument in Munich's parish church may have glorified the Wittelsbach dynasty more than it did the Meissen bishop, there can be no doubt that the town's faithful yearned after Benno's ecclesiastically sanctioned power. As participation in the young devotion grew, followers' attentions focused on the role of Benno as intercessor, wonder-worker, and pious paragon. Shortly after the saints' translation to the Church of Our Lady, votive offerings began to turn up at the saint's reliquary and processions from villages in Munich's vicinity started to make their way to the nascent shrine. By 1598, Munich's Jesuits also showed their approval of the cult when they staged a Latin School drama of the saint's life and wonders.^[47]

In 1601, a new life-sized reliquary bust appeared on the church's high altar as a testimony to the affections Benno had stirred in Munich. Made of silver and decorated with precious gems, the sculpture cost almost 1,700 florins: a princely yet appropriate commemoration to a saint whose distressed life and afterlife suited the devotional needs of Counter-Reformation Catholicism.^[48] More than half this sum came from Munich's burghers, a sign that the imported saint had found a considerable following among the town's inhabitants. The male elite of Munich had formed a new St. Benno confraternity, which was now working to promote the greater glory

[46] Sauermost, "Zur Rolle St. Michaels," p. 170; and Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche , s.v. "Benno." The Investiture Controversy was a mid-eleventh-century dispute between the German emperor and the Roman pope, which centered on the secular prince's fights to appoint bishops and archbishops; see Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 1050-1300 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964).

[47] Kirsch, "Beiträge zur Geschichte des hl. Benno," p. 74.

[48] Böck, "Die Verehrung des hi. Benno," p. 60. The Bennobogen was demolished in the nineteenth century when the Frauenkirche was returned to its original Gothic appearance; see Berg, "Der ehemalige 'Bennobogen,'" p. 312.

and expansion of the cult. For its pious works, the brotherhood chose to aid the impoverished, providing them with food and shelter and underwriting the expense of placing their children in trade apprenticeships. During the first decade of the seventeenth century, this sodality received a number of indulgences for their devotion.^[49]

The Benno cult thus fulfilled a variety of aims for the various constituencies in and around the town. Not only a symbol of Bavarian unity, Benno embodied Catholic confessional truth, a testimony to the province's championship of the Roman resurgence. In the nearby countryside, villagers looked to the saint for intercession and healing, while for members of the Munich male elite he served as a symbol and patron of "brotherly" unity.

Around 1600, the clergy of the Church of Our Lady moved to promote their new devotion in a more systematic manner, recording and publishing the saint's miracles in order to draw the faithful to Munich. In the century that followed, however, only 546 wonders were set down at the shrine, a relatively modest number when compared to other places. These miracles reveal, moreover, that the character of Benno's cult did not differ significantly from that of numerous other popular devotions in early modern Bavaria: for those seeking intercession, Benno served primarily as a healer. These miracle accounts also disclose that the pilgrimage remained relatively geographically circumscribed, with the faithful coming primarily from Upper Bavaria, the southernmost part of the territory. Beyond this region, the reputation of the cult was limited.^[50]

Munich's Church of Our Lady may never have gained the same following as the most popular Counter-Reformation cults, but this was not because of lack of promotion. During the seventeenth century, the clergy of the Frauenkirche conducted an extensive printing campaign to develop the reputation of their devotion. The largest portion of books published by the shrine were thin miracle pamphlets similar to those issued in the late Middle Ages.^[51] Al-

[49] Böck, "Die Verehrung des hi. Benno," p. 60.

[50] These findings are summarized in ibid., pp. 62ff.

[51] My conclusions are based on a reading of the following miracle books: Von allerlay Miraclen und Wunderwercken so Gott der Allmächtig durch das Fürbitt und Verdienst deß heiligen Bischoff Bennonis, nach seinem Todt und Erhebung augenscheinlich gewircket (Munich, 1601); Gründtliche Verzaichnus Etlich fürnemmer Wunderzaichen zu Endt deß 1601, und im Anfang deß 1602 Jahr in München (Munich, 1602); Umbstendig: Und warhaffter Bericht was sich zu end deß 1602. und 1603. gantze Jahr bey s. Benno in München für Wunderwerck begeben (Munich, 1603); Kurtze Verzaichnuß etlicher Miraclen und Wunderwerck so sich Anno Domini 1604 bey S. Bennonis heylthumb in München zugetragen (Munich, 1604); Kurtzer Bericht Etlicher Miracul unnd Wunderwercken so sich in dem entwichnen 1605 Jar Bey S. Bennonis Hailthum in München zugetragen (Munich, 1606); Warhaffte Beschreibung etlich sonderbarer Wunderzeichen und Genaden so Gott der Allmächtig durch Fürbitt deß H. Bischoffe Bennonis Anno 1606 unds 7. jar ... gewürcket (Munich, 1608); Extract unnd gründtlicher Bericht etlicher Gnaden: und Wunderwercken ... deß H. Bischoff Bennonis ... (Munich, 1609); Miracl und Wunderzaichen deß H. Bischoffs BENNONIS von dem 16. Junij ... 1609 biß ... 1615 Jahrs (Munich, 1615); Miracl und Wunderzaichen von ... 1615 biß ... Anno 1617 (Munich, 1617); Miracl und Wunderzaichen ... Deß H. Bischoffs BENNONIS ... von dem 8 Junij deß 1615. Jahre biß auff sein Fest deß 1622 Jahr (Munich, 1623); Extract unnd gründtlicher Bericht etlicher Gnaden und Wunderwercken ... Deü H. Bischoff Bennonis ... in den nechst entwichenen sechzehen Jarten (Munich, 1643).

though often more polished, possessing a greater degree of explanation, and more complete than late medieval books, they nevertheless remained a truly popular literature, in that by virtue of their cost and modest vocabulary they addressed the broadest possible readership. They would, of course, have been read by clerics and members of the Bavarian elite as well, but by and large these slight volumes, emblazoned with images of the saint, were meant to cultivate an awareness of Benno's miracles among the literate and semiliterate artisans and villagers who visited the site.^[52]

Yet miracle pamphlets were only one part of this publicity campaign. Like Altötting and an increasing number of other shrines, the Frauenkirche also distributed the apologetic pilgrimage book. In place of the thin, terse style of the miracle pamphlets, these works were intended for a more elite audience of clergy and laity, and they sought not only to publicize the wonders of the saint but also to explain the historical origins of his cult. For these explanations, however, clerical propagandists turned not to an examination of the early sixteenth-century controversy over Benno's cult, but to the saint's life in the eleventh century. In his own times, they argued, Benno had persistently proven his superhuman capabilities of surmounting enormous difficulties. From then until the present, he had thus been an important source of aid, a conduit through which divine power could be garnered. In the first of several pilgrimage books printed for the site, A Certain and Approved History of St. Benno , an anonymous clerical author adapted the conventions of medieval

[52] Chartier draws similar conclusions about the dissemination of miracle literature in early modern France; see Cultural Uses of Print , pp. 145-182.

hagiography to the contemporary circumstances of Benno's cult in Munich. Following the treatment given the medieval life of the saint, he divided his book into sections that examined St. Benno's vita and his posthumous miracula at Meissen and Munich. As a bonus, he provided a translation of the papal bull canonizing the saint. Woven throughout, needless to say, was also the standard anti-Protestant polemic, coupled with a counter-reformational concern for rehabilitating saintly devotion generally.

Like many pilgrimage book authors, the anonymous writer of the Certain and Approved History explicitly located Benno and his wonder-working power within the lineage of the apostolic succession, narrating the Christianization of Meissen's surrounding region and the establishment of an apostolic see in the town—two events that explained Benno's subsequent miracles as part of the Church's continued accretion to biblical narrative. As his main source the author drew from Hieronymus Emser's pre-Reformation hagiography of Benno, published in 1512 almost a decade before the saint's canonization.^[53] (During the subsequent controversy over Benno's elevation, Emser also wrote a tract attacking Luther for denouncing the cult.)^[54] Like Emser, the author of the Certain and Approved History stressed the sanctity that the future bishop of Meissen displayed from an early age. Upon entering the Benedictine order, he observed, the saint could not even read mass without breaking into tears.^[55]

Emser, however, had concentrated on the saint's ability to balance the competing demands of spiritual and worldly life, and to rise above human frailty. By contrast, although our anonymous author mentioned these traits, they were subsumed to the demands of a new, more militant piety. He focused, for example, on Benno's participation in the eleventh-century Heidenmissionen , the savage annual campaigns that forced the conversion of the Slavs and

[53] Gewiß und approbirte Historia Von S. Bennonis (Munich, 1602), "Vorrede," fol. aii. The work is the book Divi Bennonis misnensis quondam episcopi vita. Miracula et alia quedam non tam misnensibus quam germanis omnibus decora (Leipzig, 1512). The author translated the work into German as Das heilig Lebe und Legend des seligen Vaners Bennonis weyland Bischoffen zu Meyssen, gemacht vnd in das tewzsch gebracht durch Jeronymum Emser (Leipzig, 1517).

[54] Antwurt auff das lesterliche buch wider Bischoff Benno zu Meissen vnd erhebung der heyligen iungst auszgangen (Dresden, 1524).

[55] Gewiß und approbirte Historia , p. 2(r).

Wends in the region around Meissen. Yet the brutality of these militaristic crusades found no mention in our writer's account of the saint's life; instead, he portrayed these people as "arch-heretics" who, like the modern Lutherans and Calvinists, had fallen under the devil's spell. In working for these tribes' conversion, Benno therefore became a kind of Christian exorcist, delivering the deluded from damnation. In addition, our author projected on these Eastern European groups the charges of ritual murder and dualism. The most important members of their pantheon were a "god of light," Svanthewitz, and a "god of darkness," Zcernebok. To propitiate their luminous deity, the Slavs annually offered up a Christian man. Although Benno knew this, he refused to fear, even when taken prisoner. Impressed with his heroic demeanor, his captors quickly converted to Christianity.^[56]

Benno's success in converting the Slavs and Wends, however, represented the reclamation of a damned and demonically possessed tribe, a fact that certainly did not please the devil. Thus angered, Satan began to plot against the saint—and here our author alleges a series of ordeals the devil produced in his effort to discredit and destroy the bishop.^[57] The most important of these was the Investiture Controversy, in which struggle the bishop remained faithful to Rome, even though it meant defying the emperor.^[58] In this history, then, this famous panimperial struggle is described as an event contingent on the successful missionary efforts of a consecrated bishop. As in the forty-day trial of Christ in the wilderness described in Luke 4, Mark 1, and Matthew 4, Satan proved capable of producing numerous snares and temptations for the Meissen clergyman. Yet in this case the demonic offensive against a Catholic saint bore with it the power to change the course of history.

With the conclusion of this extravagant hagiography, our author moved on to recount some of the miracles Benno performed during both life and afterlife. These he presented in separate chapters, attempting to demonstrate an unbroken strand of wonders produced by the saint from the days of his earthly ministry until the

[56] Ibid., pp. 4-5.

[57] Ibid., p. 5.

[58] Ibid., pp. 6-7.

present. In the first section, containing miracles the saint worked while still living, the stories recall the wonders of both the Old and New Testaments. Like Moses, the saint turned a stone into a lake to refresh one of his audience, and like Jesus he was also able to transform water into wine.^[59] By attributing the wonders of both the ancient Jews and Christ to the saint, the book again sought to establish a convergence between biblical narrative and the continuously unfolding story worked through Catholicism's celestial intercessors, the saints.

In the remaining two sections, Benno's posthumous miracles at Meissen and Munich are examined.^[60] The second of these sections—concerning the saint's miracles recorded in the Church of Our Lady—was given an eschatological cast. In the foreword to these accounts, the author called attention to these miracles as "signs" sent by God to confirm Catholic truth against the attacks of Protestants: "God the Almighty has also allowed his great miracles to shine forth clearly in these our last, confused, and unhappy times in order to confirm powerfully the intercession and intervention of his chosen ones." Again recalling Old Testament language and imagery, he applied the concept of a chosen people to the Catholic Church, and rhapsodized that the miraculous nature of sainthood was in essence a special seal to the "God of Israel's" covenant with that institution. "So [it is] not without reason that David writes that God is wondrous in his saints: Wondrous is the Lord in the mighty ones. The God of Israel will give his people power and strength."^[61]

The author of the Certain and Approved History thus strove to make Benno's wonder-working power contingent on his standing in the apostolic succession, his relationship to the biblical and ecclesiastical narratives, and the colossal struggle he waged against Satan. However, the concern for the saint's actual life, as found in this pilgrimage book intended for a relative elite cadre of clergy and

[59] Ibid., pp. 7-8.

[60] Ibid., the section treating the Meissen miracles appears on pp. 12-23; the Munich miracles appear on pp. 23-29. These miracles had been separately published as Gründtlicher Verzaichnus Etlich furnemmer Wunderzaichen so sich bey S. Bennonis Heilthumb zu München zu Endt des 1601. Und im Anfang deß 1602. Jahr in München begeben (Munich, 1602); and Eygentliche Relation, Was sich für ein herrlich Miracl, nechst vergangen Monat Novembris, diß lauffent 1601. in unser L. Frawen Kirch zu München begeben (Munich, 1602).

[61] Gewiß und approbirte Historia , p. 23.

laity, was not the staple of the thin miracle books being published for the site at the same time. When the clerics in the Church of Our Lady addressed their broad popular audience through the pronouncement of miracles orally and in the miracle books, it was the ongoing, contemporary testimonies to Benno's sanctity that predominated, not the reputation of the cult's saintly source. Certainly, pilgrims to the imposing Benno Arch during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries could not have massed the intensely visual representation of Benno as a triumphant, legendary figure. Nor could they have failed to mistake the connections that this monument underscored between the legendary sanctity of the Meissen bishop and the contemporary efforts of the Wittelsbach dynasty to sanctify its role as Catholicism's protector. In presenting its historicized apology for the cult, the Counter-Reformation program in Munich thus advanced multiple media: one a pilgrimage book addressed to an elite cadre, the other a visible, artistic representation intended for all the faithful. Nonetheless, these artistic and literary campaigns did share a common subtext, for both explained how a saintly thaumaturge, exorcist, and bishop had ultimately triumphed over Catholicism's detractors with the aid of a consecrated dynasty.

The print campaign conducted for this shrine was one of the most diverse waged by any devotion in Bavaria during the seventeenth century. It was, indeed, an essential component of the program to establish and foster a previously unknown cult. In the end, however, the campaign's successes proved modest, and caution us from assuming that printed clerical advocacy alone could create a truly widespread devotion. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as in the later Middle Ages, printed texts remained adjuncts to far more important forms of oral and word-of-mouth promotion. Moreover, it was ultimately Bavaria's pilgrims—her villagers, artisans, and burghers—rather than the nobles, clerics, or other elites, who controlled the destiny of the duchy's shrines, showering these sites with varying degrees of attention. Yet even so, it is not insignificant that in the case of St. Benno's devotion, the Wittelsbachs, Munich's clergy, and her burghers had combined forces to create a reasonably prosperous cult where none had previously existed. At the center stood the figure of a saintly thaumaturge and bishop whose canonization had been relatively recent

and controversial. His churchly seal of approval was attractive to both Munich's clerics and Bavaria's princes, who used the cult as an instrument for heightening confessional awareness and demonstrating the unstoppable miraculous potency of Catholicism's celestial intercessors.

In assessing changes between canonization practices in the late Middle Ages and the Counter-Reformation, Peter Burke noted that the Roman ecclesiastical hierarchy in the later period drew its saints almost exclusively from the ranks of clerical elites.^[62] The resurgence of Benno's cult at Munich is one episode away from the Church's power center at Rome that fits with this general pattern. The author of the Certain and Approved History strove—like the Roman curia's investigators in canonization proceedings-to make wonderworking more clearly a preserve of the clerical caste and the product of an enduring biblical narrative. Nevertheless, diversity persisted with regard to the Munich cult. The Wittelsbach princes appropriated the saint in their rites of translation, in their triumphal procession, and in their artistic representations in ways that glorified not only their ancestry but also their hegemonic ambitions over Bavaria's confessional loyalties. The town's elite male burghers, too, celebrated the new saint as a model of piety, placing him at the center of their own efforts to battle poverty. And within and beyond Munich's gates, artisans and villagers looked to Benno for aid in battling illness and unyielding circumstances. If we read the modest miracle books printed for this audience, we find that their clerical promoters relied largely, if not solely, on the claim of contemporary miracles to nurture the cult's popularity. For this readership, composed of modest craftsmen, merchants, and members of the lower clergy, it was not narrative legend, but the visual embodiment of the Benno Arch that testified to the saint's standing within an ancient succession.

Today, the village of Bettbrunn shows few signs that it was once the site of a busy Counter-Reformation pilgrimage. A hamlet of two hundred inhabitants, it lies about a dozen miles northeast of Ingolstadt in the remote and economically depressed Köschinger For-

[62] Peter Burke, "How to Be a Counter-Reformation Saint," in Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800 , ed. Kaspar von Greyerz (Boston, 1984), pp. 45-55.

est. During the late sixteenth century, however, the place, located as it was within the borders of Bavaria yet close to the Protestant Upper Palatinate, came to assume considerable importance—greater importance than it might otherwise have enjoyed. Selfconsciously promoted as part of Bavaria's counter-reformational policies on the part of both Church and state, Bettbrunn proved a source of irritation to Protestant officials. In the visitation records of the Upper Palatinate, it was frequently mentioned as a place sought out by secret Catholics.^[63]

Although Bettbrunn was the site of a pilgrimage dedicated to the "Holy Savior," few documents exist to inform us about its history before the Counter-Reformation. An indulgence bull dated 1330 points to the shrine's late medieval origins, and two preReformation votive candles still survive, indicating that pilgrims visited there in this period. Several mass endowments and land donations were also made before the Reformation.^[64] Yet little can be said with certainty about the events that precipitated the devotion. The documentary silence was broken in 1584, however, when Johannes Engerd, a professor of poetics at the University of Ingolstadt, published Bettbrunn's first Counter-Reformation pilgrimage book, Holy Savior at Bettbrunn .^[65]

Like so many of Bavaria's first-generation propagandists, Engerd was a convert; he was also a close associate of Johann Rabus, Martin Eisengrein, and Johann Nass.^[66] The circumstances behind his authorship of the work, moreover, probably reflect how the clergy at many South German shrines developed their print campaigns in the wake of the Reformation. In this case, the local parish priest at

[63] "Der altbairische Wallfahrtsort Bettbrunn lag an der Grenze zur reformierten Oberpfalz. Trotz der verordneten Einführung der Reformation zeigte sich in der Pfalz katholisches Leben von Dauer, zumal in den Grenzgebieten, in denen regen Wechselverkehr zwischen katholischer und reformierter Bevölkerung stattfinden konnte" (Alois Döring, "St. Salvator in Bettbrunn," p. 81).

[64] A charter from 1374 mentions the place, and the village is cited in the account book of Ludwig the Bearded in 1417; these documents retain their silence, however, concerning Bettbrunn's pilgrimage. See ibid., pp. 75-78.

[65] Johann Engerd, Sanct Saluator zu Bettbrunn in Bayrn: Das ist Von der Alten H. Capellen und wirdigem hochberühmten Gotteshauß unsers lieben Herrn Sanct Saluators zu Bettbrunn in Fürstenthumb Bayrn, Regenspurger Bisthumbs: Auch Von den vielen Wunderzeychen, Heylthumb, Gelübden, Walfärten und anderer Christlichen Andacht desselben Orts / zc. (Ingolstadt, 1584).

[66] ADB , s.v. "Engerd, J ohannes"; and Karl Prantl, Geschichte der LudwigMaximilians-Universität in Ingolstadt, Landshut, München , vol. 1 (Munich, 1872), PP. 334-335.

Bettbrunn, Georg Prantl, recruited Engerd to write a book of apology and polemic for his church. Gathering together manuscript miracle reports, a rhymed chronicle treating the shrine's origins, and various other documents for the Ingolstadt rhetorician to use, Prantl paid the professor ten gulden. Within twelve days, Engerd had produced a two-hundred-page book modeled on Eisengrein's Our Lady at Altötting .^[67]

His source on Bettbrunn's history was allegedly the late medieval poetic chronicle he received from Prantl, which he redacted into the conclusion of his book. Yet Engerd was himself a poet; and the manuscript that he supposedly used no longer exists. Moreover, in his conclusion to his pilgrimage book he admits to having "improved" the older chronicle. Perhaps, like many a propagandist in any period, he wrote the poem about the site himself, drawing upon scattered bits of evidence and lore about the pilgrimage. In any event, Holy Savior at Bettbrunn can hardly be considered a dispassionate, detached account of the origins of the Bettbrunn devotion. Like all Counter-Reformation pilgrimage books, it is partly a creative reworking of legend and verifiable history and partly a story constructed for purposes of polemics and zealous piety.

Like Eisengrein's earlier work, Engerd's book was published at the Eder Press in Ingolstadt, the printshop from which most late sixteenth-century pilgrimage works issued. The first edition of seven hundred cost sixty-one florins, four kreuzer to print.^[68] It is impossible to gauge at what price these books were marketed at the shrine in the 1580s and 1590s, but even if the Bettbrunn clergy had taken a modest profit, the books would certainly have been within the means of more prosperous artisans and merchants, the upper clergy, and state bureaucrats.^[69]

Although only 11 percent of the shrine's still-extant early modern

[67] Döring, "St. Salvator in Bettbrunn," pp. 126-127.

[68] Ibid., p. 127.

[69] I derive these conclusions by dividing the total price of the press run (61 fl., 4 kr.) plus Engerd's authorial fee (10 fl.) by 700 (the total number of books), to get 6 kreuzer (1 florin = 60 kreuzer). A Bavarian ordinance promulgated in 1622 stipulated that a day laborer must be paid at least 7 kreuzer, if provided with food, and 10-12 kreuzer without food. The cost of the book would consequently have been about what a laborer was paid for one day's work at the time. This was a sizable sum, yet not beyond the reach of more prosperous artisans, professionals, clerics, and state officials. See Wolfgang Behringer, "Scheiternde Hexenprozesse: Volksglaube und Hexenverfolgung um 1600 in München," in Kultur der einfachen Leute , ed. Richard van Dülmen (Munich, 1983), p. 51.

miracle records indicate the occupation of pilgrims, we can make some educated guesses. Because Bavaria was still a peasant society in this period, the largest proportion of visitors to the shrine would have been agricultural workers and farmers from the vicinity. It is logical to assume, moreover, that where an occupation was not mentioned, it was probably because the person came from an unexceptional background. Clerical scribes, after all, would have been more anxious to record and promote the pilgrimages of "honorable" members of the elite than those of simple farmers and peasants. Yet according to the Bettbrunn miracle records, the procession to the shrine was not limited to rural society alone. In those cases where occupation is mentioned in the miracle records, 64 percent were artisans and members of the building trades. Another 10 percent were state bureaucrats (4 percent), academics and clerics (4.5 percent), and army officers (1.5 percent)—all occupations that by the end of the sixteenth century required a relatively high degree of literacy. There was clearly a market for the Bettbrunn pilgrimage book, though it was far smaller than the market that would eventually exist for the thin miracle pamphlets produced in the next century.^[70]

In his introduction to the work, Engerd acknowledged his indebtedness to Martin Eisengrein.^[71] Following the pattern established in Our Lady at Altötting , Engerd began by narrating Bettbrunn's history, including the area's pre-Christian past and its conversion by apos-

[70] The 11 percent of accounts that include occupational status also specify that 18 percent of pilgrims to the site were peasants, and 8 percent were servants and laborers. It would be logical to assume that the keepers of the manuscript miracle accounts tended to note city dwellers—artisans, burghers, academics, and clergy—more often than peasants because their journeys were more unusual. Nevertheless, this information does point to a sizable minority of visitors to the shrine from the middle and upper ranks of Bavarian society. See Alois Döring, "St. Salvator in Bettbrunn," p. 194. It appears to have taken about fifteen years for the Engerd pilgrimage book to be sold out, since a new edition was reprinted in 1597. Revised and edited histories continued to be reissued until the mid-eighteenth century. Döring's study of Bettbrunn's accounts (pp. 126-127) shows that in the seventeenth century, three hundred to four hundred of the thin miracle pamphlets were sold each year, but only thirty-five to forty of the longer pilgrimage books found purchasers. The market that prevailed at that time for the longer legendary pilgrimage book, then, was roughly one-tenth the size of that of the miracle book.

[71] Johann Engerd, Sanct Saluator zu Bettbrunn: Das ist Von der Alten H. Capellen und wirdigem hoch beruehmten Gotteshauß unsers lieben Herrn Sanct Saluators zu Bettbrunn in Fuerstenthumb Bayrn, Regenspurger Bisthumbs (Ingolstadt, 1584), "Vorred," fol. aiii(r).

tolic missionaries during both Roman and early medieval times. He noted, for instance, that within years of the Ascension, St. Lucius Cyrensis was preaching the Gospel at Regensburg, Bettbrunn's diocesan capital. Moving on from these earliest missionaries to consider the Christianization of the heathen Bajuwaren invaders, he then turned to St. Rupert, Bavaria's "first apostle." Engerd made a long sojourn through the earliest ecclesiastical history of the territory, telling of Rupert and his apostolic successors' establishment of episcopal governments at Regensburg, Passau, Salzburg, Freising, and Brixen. The purpose of this prologue soon becomes clear: for Engerd, as for other Counter-Reformation authors, the apostolic succession—with its connections to the biblical drama—possessed a tangibility that explained the subsequent plethora of miracles. Bavaria's conversion by apostolic figures conferred a miraculous presence on the subsequent history of the Church in the province.^[72]

In his earlier treatment of Altötting, Martin Eisengrein had transformed his tiny chapel into a place of pagan worship converted to better use by its Christian consecration. Engerd, for his part, insisted that the practice of pilgrimage itself was an ancient Germanic rite, purified by its importation into Christianity. In one digression, he betrays his humanist, rhetorical training and provides an etymology for the word pilgrimage (Wallfahrt ). He alleged that the ancient practice of Wallfahrt (which he misinterpreted as meaning something like Waldfahrt , or, literally, "forest journey") was a propitiatory rite conducted in the primeval woods to secure the protection of the heathen gods before battles and ordeals.^[73] Pilgrimages, he asserted, began

in the time of the ancient Bavarians, [who] worshipped their [god] Alman Argle with chants, songs, and poems. Often before they went into battle or [faced] difficult trials they would make walfart or journeys into the forest, especially to the great oak forests. From this, we derive the term "pilgrimage." After they became Christians, they

[72] Ibid., pp. 1-29.

[73] For a discussion of the etymology of the word Wallfahrt , including its humanistic treatment as a form of pre-Christian propitiation, see Wolfgang Brückner, "Zur Phänomenologie und Nomenklatur des Wallfahrtswesens und seiner Erforschung," in Volkskultur und Geschichte. Festgabe für Josef Dünninger , ed. Dieter Harmening (Berlin, 1970), pp. 384-424. During the 1960s, a dispute also raged over the precise origins of the term among German folklorists; Brückner's article summarizes the relevant printed exchanges.

visited and revered the churches of Christ, the true savior; Mary, Our Lady; and the other dear saints of God with prayers and Christian pilgrimages.^[74]

Engerd hoped that early modern Bavarians, like the ancient Germans before them who sought out their god Aiman Argle in the forests before going to battle, would journey to shrines like Bettbrunn to enlist the power that reposed there for waging the battle of daily life. The old customs had been purified by their importation into Christianity, he argued, and blessed by a God who showed approval with "striking miracles." Thus in his account, pilgrimage became a visible testimony to Catholicism's power to work conversions not only on human beings, but on their age-old customs and practices as well.

Following this prologue, Engerd moved on to treat the legend of Bettbrunn's foundation. The devotion at Bettbrunn, he wrote, began in 1125, when a "poor, simple, but God-fearing" shepherd went to mass to fulfill his Easter duties. When it came time to take communion, the shepherd, who was a believer in the Real Presence and a fervent venerator of the host, received the wafer, yet removed it from his mouth and placed it in a special box. Since he could not attend mass often because of his flock, he desired to use the host for his private devotion and to have the Savior near him at all times. Returning to his sheep, the shepherd made an altar by fixing his staff in the ground and placing the host on top of it. Once when his animals grew restless and he was distracted, he picked up his staff without thinking and hurled it at his flock; the consecrated wafer flew into the air and landed on the ground. In great distress, the shepherd tried to retrieve it, but it would not allow itself to be moved or touched. Terrified, he ran to his confessor to tell him what had happened, and the priest hurried to the site to rescue the wafer. Each time he tried to approach it, however, it would move farther away from him beyond his grasp. The priest immediately set out for Regensburg to report the incident to his bishop, who was also "eager to see and experience the miracle" and "traveled to the place in a special, splendid procession." Arriving at the spot, the Regensburg bishop was able to retrieve the host, whereupon he vowed to

[74] Engerd, Sanct Saluator zu Bettbrunn , p. 28.

build a special chapel to honor the Savior at the site. From that date, Engerd alleged, Bettbrunn became a place of refuge and hope for countless Christians.^[75]

The austere myth that the pilgrimage book author related is deceptively simple, for it is a story replete with details that served Counter-Reformation purposes. It begins when a pious yet misguided shepherd decides to take the Eucharist away from the parish so that he can have God's presence by him at all times. There is no hint whatsoever in this account that the herder's intentions were evil: they were but misguided. Although shepherds, like prostitutes, millers, Jews, and women, had often appeared in medieval eucharistic legends as members of marginalized groups who harbored maleficent or magical intentions toward the host,^[76] here the shepherd is transformed into a paragon of honorable piety, motivated only by pure desires. When he accidentally throws his staff and sends the host toppling to the ground, he knows immediately the consequences of his action. Once he seeks out his priestly confessor for guidance, the legend becomes a vehicle for outlining the proper flow of authority within the Church. When the priest's attempts prove unsuccessful, it is up to the territory's spiritual overlord, the Regensburg bishop, to recover the mistreated wafer. Thus, only an apostolically consecrated figure is in the end able to counteract and make right the shepherd's mistreatment of the Eucharist, and it is the same man who proposed to build a church at the site.

As we have seen, the proliferation of unapproved and undisciplined devotions was a persistent problem for the late medieval ecclesiastical hierarchy. In Bavaria, the construction of numerous unsanctioned churches and altars had threatened to negate the Church's ultimate control over cult.^[77] Engerd, however, in commenting on the legend of the shrine's foundation, intoned the importance of ecclesiastical sanction: "Who first discovered and founded this chapel which has been adorned with so many of the wondrous works of God? It was certainly no Lutheran, neither heretic nor master of the sects, but rather a Catholic man, an emi-

[75] Ibid., pp. 30-34.

[76] Browe, "Die Eucharistie als Zaubermittel"; idem, Die eucharistischen Wunder des Mittelalters; and Heuser, "'Heilig Blut,'" pp. 11, 13.

[77] Zika, "Hosts, Processions, and Pilgrimages."

nent bishop, an esteemed, highborn prince and lord, Lord Hartwich I, the twentieth bishop of Regensburg."^[78]

The devotion that developed at Bettbrunn, though given first approval by the Regensburg bishop, also represented a rededication of the site to its original purpose. In ancient times, Engerd stated, the place had been known as Bettbrunn, literally "well of prayers"; as proof that the site had been revered by the ancient tribes who lived there, the author called attention to a primordial spring that still flowed in the town. By 1125, however, the region had been largely abandoned, and only two modest houses were left. The site was now known as Vehbrunn, or "cattle spring." Following the great eucharistic miracle that transpired there, the place-name was changed back to Bettbrunn—and thus the event became in Engerd's account a pronouncement that returned the site to its original purpose as a place of prayer and devotion.

When the holy chapel was built on the oft-trod site, the original name Bettbrunn was once again adopted. Just as the pious, simple shepherd sought to direct his prayers to the living well of holiness and [to use] the true heavenly bread of Christ Jesus for the spiritual succor and nourishment of his soul in the same way as he refreshed his body with earthly food and the spring of the forest, then we, too, should do these same things at this holy chapel of Bettbrunn. We should pray by the well of life, Christ Jesus, who is always present in the holy sacrament. We should pray by the well replete with God's gracious works. We should pray there at the well where our prayers and vows are rewarded with such power and wondrous grace from God.^[79]

Bettbrunn's host miracle, then, was a sign that revealed to local inhabitants the place's true purpose as a reservoir of God's grace and power. By concentrating on the power of the place, Engerd also maintained the traditional clerical reluctance to link thaumaturgy and intercession with the Eucharist itself. After he had related the story of the establishment of the first Christian chapel at the site, the host failed to figure in any of the subsequent narrative.^[80]

During the first two centuries of its existence the Bettbrunn church remained a simple place of prayerful reverence, but in 1330

[78] Engerd, Sanct Saluator zu Bettbrunn , p. 42.

[79] Ibid., pp. 37-38.

[80] Ibid., pp. 41-45.

the original building burned down, and the shrine's fate dramatically altered. For in the still-smoldering embers, Bettbrunners discovered their chapel's image of the Savior miraculously unharmed.^[81] The pious villagers now built a much larger church to house their victorious image. Miracles occurred, and bishops and popes awarded the cult their official sanction: indulgences. A popular thaumaturgic pilgrimage developed, drawing even Bavaria's nobility and clergy to Bettbrunn's great "house of miracles"; indeed, from that time the Wittelsbachs began to harbor a special and longlasting affection for the site—as evidenced in Engerd's account by a 1575 pilgrimage of the Wittelsbach son Ferdinand upon recovering from a serious illness.^[82]

With his story of perpetual reverence and devotion completed, Engerd turned to satisfying the pious curiosity of his literate readership by pointing out the numerous spiritual attractions of the site. He provided, for example, a twenty-page catalogue of the shrine's relic collection that included descriptions of 28 reliquaries and 110 separate saints' remains.^[83] Interestingly, a visitation conducted at Bettbrunn twenty-five years earlier, in 1559, had discovered no relics in the church at all. This lack of saintly remains was, however, typical of many medieval Bavarian shrines, and to remedy it relic collecting often became almost a passion among the clerical elites of the Catholic Reformation. To be sure, swelling collections of relics proved most useful for enhancing traditional visual piety. At Bettbrunn by the late sixteenth century, according to Engerd, the shrine's relics were being displayed in an annual ceremony similar to the great "relic shows" customary in many late medieval German cities, where the entire chorus of local saints would be ceremonially displayed before a large audience and the indulgences attached to the viewing and veneration of each announced to the crowd. At rural Bettbrunn, the practice was largely the same. As each relic was held up for view, Engerd tells us, pilgrims spliced a notch on their walking staffs.^[84]

[81] Ibid., p. 46.

[82] Ibid., pp. 49-56. Ferdinand commissioned a series of murals for the exterior church walls that are no longer extant. Engerd quotes a passage from their inscription on pp. 55-56.

[83] Ibid., pp. 93-110.

[84] The 1559 Bettbrunn visitation is discussed in Döring, "St. Salvator in Bettbrunn," p. 86. Concerning Johannes Engerd's description of the Bettbrunn relic show, Sanct Saluator zu Bettbrunn , p. 102. On relic veneration in Germany and Bavaria before the Reformation, see Beissel, Verehrung der Heiligen . On traditions of salvific display, see Mayer, "Die heilbringende Schau."

Besides picturesque details like these, this work, like so many Counter-Reformation pilgrimage books, painted vivid idealized portraits of the pious behavior of those who visited the shrine. When people emerged from the forest surrounding the village and first saw the holy site, they fell immediately to their knees. They made their way to the shrine, saying Our Fathers with raised hands and staffs in ritualized gestures of prayer. They thanked God and Christ for preserving them and prayed that the Lord would expunge their sins so that they might enter into this "Holy of Holies."^[85] Such passages demonstrate clearly that ideal mixture of inner contemplation and outward display of devotion so encouraged by the counter-reformers. With them, writers like Engerd may have been attempting to inculcate a standard of propriety and decorum among their readers. Yet for many of those pilgrims who purchased these books or who were participating in the disciplined devotional resurgence of the confraternities, these pious ideals had already converged with reality.

In the final chapter, Engerd turned his attention to relating miracles recorded at the church.^[86] Like the Tuntenhausen clerics, he claimed to have selected these from a much larger number of miracles—some 3,500, in fact—recorded at the shrine between 1573 and 1584.^[87] Because the original records from this period no longer exist, this number cannot be verified; yet the offering revenues of the shrine in these decades, when the pilgrimage was just beginning to grow after the initial impact of the Reformation, do not support the claim to such a plethora of miracles.^[88]

In relating these testimonies, Engerd, like Eisengrein before him, ordered his accounts under various thematic headings, ones that explicitly recalled the miracles worked by Christ. The first sub-

[85] Engerd, Sanct Saluator zu Bettbrunn , pp. 107-108.

[86] Ibid., pp. 113-188.

[87] Ibid., p. 119.

[88] In 1584, offering revenue at the site totaled 394 florins, 6 kreuzer, a sizable sum. When compared to offerings at other Bavarian shrines, however, an amount of this size does not suggest that 3,500 miracles could be left behind in a little more than a decade. See Döring, "St. Salvator in Bettbrunn," p. 89.

division, which recounted seven cases of demonic possession and exorcism, was typical of the approach he took throughout. After presenting each testimony—including the details of the votant's possession, vow, cure, and pilgrimage—he used the evidence of these miracles to attack Protestantism in a blatant polemic.^[89] While Engerd's arguments and rhetorical style may have confirmed among his readers the truths of Catholicism's thaumaturgy, his use of the "signs" of the Gospel narrative, in which he related them to contemporary circumstances, was likely an even stronger testimony to the power of miracle. Christ continued, Engerd assured, to cure the faithful who came to Bertbrunn, just as he had cured the faithful of biblical times. By relating these contemporary miracles to those of the living Savior and lodging them within the context of his Catholic shrine, Engerd presented the contemporary Church's thaumaturgy as having a special relation to the scriptural story. In this way he combated Protestant polemical charges regarding the dangerous and "unscriptural" innovations of the traditional Church's divine cult. He did so, moreover, by turning the reformers' own weapon—the razor of Scripture—on themselves.

In truth, despite the biblical subheadings, the tales Engerd recounted were remarkably similar to those in circulation at other shrines around the same time. Yet there was a difference, for his history of Bettbrunn was also a carefully organized and framed account of cultic development. The site, revered and sought out by Bavaria's pre-Christian tribes, had been largely abandoned by the time of the shrine's precipitant host miracle. Centuries ago, the bishop of Regensburg had witnessed that event and approved the development of a devotion at the site. After two centuries of prayer-filled reverence, a second miracle—this time of preservation from fire—had again occurred there.

In point of fact, however, it is likely, given the almost complete lack of medieval documentation on these miracles, that the ecclesiastical hierarchy figured little in the history of the shrine's birth and development. Nor can Engerd's claim of a long and special affection for the place on the part of the Wittelsbachs be verified. If

[89] Engerd, Sanct Saluator zu Bettbrunn , pp. 113-119.

family members visited Bettbrunn in the late Middle Ages, they left behind no enduring votive gift to testify to their journey—a curious oversight for princely pilgrims.

The myth of Bettbrunn, with its mix of history and legend and its strains of ancient reverence and subsequent diocesan and ducal approval, lived on in Bavaria for almost two centuries.^[90] As the year 1600 approached, the first edition of Engerd's Holy Savior at Bettbrunn sold out; a second edition revised by David Mörlin went on sale at the shrine in 1597. One year later, the preacher Jacob Hornstein published a shorter pilgrimage book that repeated Engerd's codification of the legend.^[91] By excluding contemporary miracles from his work, Hornstein was able to provide readers with a modest, cheaper alternative to Engerd's tome. In tandem, the two works expanded the audience for the carefully crafted Counter-Reformation story. In his expanded edition of Holy Savior , moreover, the editor David Mörlin included four miracles reported at the shrine by Lutherans who desired to "test" the site's power before renouncing their Protestant faith. Satisfied, they converted to Catholicism.^[92] These cases remind us of how important the Roman clergy considered Bettbrunn as a testimony to the greater thaumaturgic and intercessory power of Catholicism vis-à-vis Protestantism. Their inclusion in the pilgrimage book indicates that this shrine may have been selected for literary invention more because of Bettbrunn's location in a confessional border region than because of any explicit demands of Catholic piety.

[90] It appears, for instance, in a pilgrimage song by Oswald Schenhäuser, Ein newer Geistlicher Catholischer Ruff, Creutz, oder Walfart Gesang. Von dem grossen Mirackel das in dem 1125. Jar zu Bettbrunn in Bayrn (Ingolstadt, 1585). A revised edition of Engerd's work was published by David Mörlin as Sanct Salvator zu Bettbrunn in Bayrn (Ingolstadt, 1597). Two devotional books expanded on Engerd's legend in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Ambrosius Schnaderbeck, S. Salvator. Ein gnadenreicher Bettbrunnen zu Bettbrunnen (Ingolstadt, 1687); and Kornmesser, S. Salvator zu Bettbrunn (Ingolstadt, 1754).

[91] Mörlin, Sanct Salvator zu Bettbrunn in Bayrn; and Jacob Hornstein, S. Saluator Das ist: Warhaffter kurtzer Bericht von der heiligen beruehmbten Wallfahrtskirchen (Ingolstadt: Eder, 1598).

[92] Mörlin, Sanct Salvator zu Bettbrunn in Bayrn , pp. 247-251: "Das 24. Capitel. Von etlichen Sect-Ketzer-Lutherischen, welche sich gleicherweiß bey dem lieben heiligen Salvatorn zu Bettbrunn jhrer obligenden Schwach- unnd Kranckheit halber angezeygt und jhrer Verlobdnuß Gesundheit erlangt haben." Mörlin states that besides these four cases, an additional twelve cases of "Protestant" pilgrimage were cited in the original manuscript records he viewed when compiling the printed book.