medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Nicholas of Flüe is the patron saint of the Helvetic Confederation (perhaps better known to some as Switzerland). A well-to-do farmer and local official in Unterwalden, he farmed in today's municipality of Flüeli near Sachseln in canton Obwalden. When Nicholas was fifty he experienced a vision that led him to become a contemplative. Leaving his pious wife Dorothea, who is said to have supported him in his decision, and their ten children, Nicholas set off for Straßburg / Strasbourg to join the Friends of God but, prompted by a vision confirming previous advice that as a Swiss he would be unwelcome there, returned to Flüeli where he established himself as an hermit. After a year, the locals built him a chapel. Nicholas now ate very little, experienced many visions, and became widely known as a holy man. His advice to the Diet of Stans in 1481 is supposed to have prevented the Confederation from dissolving through civil war.
In probably 1488 a book of Nicholas' meditations, ascribed to an illiterate Bruder Klaus ('Brother Nick'), appeared without date in Augsburg. This book, commonly known from the designation of its learned reporter/editor as the _Pilgertraktat_ ('Pilgrim Treatise'), contains a woodcut imagistically representing the topics treated in the book's initial section:
http://www.nvf.ch/imag/medipilg_gr.jpg
What is thought to be an earlier depiction (ca. 1480-1481) of the same scheme is the painted cloth known as the Sachsler Meditationsbild kept in the parish church in Sachseln:
http://www.nvf.ch/imag/medibild_gr.jpg
Nicholas died on this day in 1487. Miracles were reported at his grave soon after his burial and a cult arose. He was beatified in 1649 and canonized in 1947. In Swiss churches, Nicholas is celebrated liturgically on 25. September (his patronalia). Today is his day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology and in the Evangelischer Namenkalender Deutschlands.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Nicholas of Flüe:
a) as depicted in the aforementioned late fifteenth-century Augsburg printing (prob. 1488) of his _Pilgertraktat_:
http://www.nvf.ch/brunnenvision.asp
b) as depicted (detail views) on a wing of a dismembered late fifteenth-century altarpiece (1492) from an earlier state of the parish church in Sachseln and now in the Museum Bruder Klaus Sachseln:
http://www.bruderklaus.com/images/gallerie/show/000044.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/jonsbfl
c) as portrayed in an early sixteenth-century limewood altar statue (ca. 1504) in the lower chapel at Flüeli-Ranft, the site of Nicholas' hermitage:
http://www.bruderklaus.com/images/gallerie/show/000033.jpg
d) as depicted in an early sixteenth-century woodcut (1518):
http://www.bruderklaus.com/images/gallerie/show/000019.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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