Morgue of the hospice on the Great St. Bernhard

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Morgue of the hospice on the Great St. Bernhard

The Morgue of the hospice on the Great St. Bernard is a 1476 close to the hospice on the Great St. Bernard built ossuary . According to tradition, the bones of the Piedmontese soldiers who fell on the pass on April 17th and 19th, 1476 were buried in it. Until modern times, the morgue was used to store mountain victims found in winter.

history

Depiction of the interior in the "Souvenirs du St. Bernard et Simplon"

As part of the Burgundian Wars , on April 17 and 19, 1476, fighting broke out on the Great St. Bernhard between the Valais , allied with Bern , and the Piedmontese , allied with Burgundy , under the leadership of Duke Louis de Challant. According to tradition , the new morgue of the hospice, built according to the documents in 1476, served as an ossuary for the fallen. In the following centuries, mountain victims were buried in the small building . The terrain of the hospice is largely rocky. In addition, the ground is frozen for seven months a year. A burial of the travelers and mountain victims who perished on the pass in winter was therefore not possible on site with reasonable effort. For reasons of space, the dead, as they were found, were first laid out on a table wrapped in sheets, then fixed to boards with cords and placed vertically in the rear chamber of the building. The dry air, which passed through two grilled wall openings opposite one another, and the cold mummified the bodies and largely preserved their appearance and facial features for many years. Over time, the cords came loose and the collapsed bodies rot from the moisture in the soil. The bones were then stacked in the front chamber. Father Detry reported in 1949 that a visitor recognized his uncle many years later.

The Morgue as a tourist destination

The Morgue was a popular tourist attraction on the way over the pass until the first half of the 20th century. The sometimes improper behavior of the visitors up to the stealing of body parts as souvenirs led to the fact that the Morgue was bricked up in 1950. In the late 1970s, a small door was installed for a film documentary. However, the premises are no longer open to the public. A number of lithographed depictions and photo views of the mummies on postcards date from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

literature

  • Louis Blondel : L'Hospice du Grand St-Bernard - Étude archéologique , p. 39f. ( Online , PDF, accessed June 23, 2018)
  • Théo Wyler: The Morgue on St. Bernhard . In: When the echoes were still leased: from the beginnings of tourism in Switzerland, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2000, p. 49ff.

Web links

Commons : Morgue des Hospices on the Great St. Bernhard  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Louis Blondel: L'Hospice du Grand St-Bernard - Étude archéologique , p. 39f.
  2. ^ Francis Wharton: Wharton and Stille's Medical jurisprudence. V. 2, Volume 2, Part 1, Kay, 1873, note p on p. 265.

Coordinates: 45 ° 52 '6.8 "  N , 7 ° 10' 16.5"  E ; CH1903:  579234  /  79693