A Pilgrimage to St. Gangolf's Shrine

Maybe my dislike for guys in long skirts is genetic. My mother sure had little use for men of the cloth. She thought of them as seducers of the gullible. Perhaps that had more to do with the fact that my brother is a Lutheran minister and she was very disappointed in him. Be that as it may, my own distaste for cassocked priests, howling monks, chanting Krishnas, whirling dervishes or grim mullahs of whatever persuasion can be traced back to my early school days in Germany. In grammar school, it was always the Lutheran minister who was quick to smack you on the head with the ruler or to whack the back of your hand with it, if your recital of the 23rd Psalm or of excerpts from Dr. Melanchthon’s catechism were not up to par or if your hymn singing was off key. Those smacks really hurt.


Ours was not a madrassah, but the Taliban would have felt right at home as far as the discipline was concerned. I learned early to stay out of their reach. I lived in the Rhoen Mountains on the eastern edge of the state of Hessen in Germany near Fulda and close to the erstwhile Iron Curtain. This was a very Catholic region, once ruled by the prince bishop of Fulda. We were one of the very few Lutheran families in the area. It was the home of St. Boniface, the patron saint of Fulda. St. Boniface was an English monk from Exeter named Wynfrid, who had come to convert the heathen Germanic tribes to Christianity some twelve hundred and fifty years ago. He was the one who anointed Pepin the Short as king of the Franks in 751, confirming the union of the church with the monarchy and apparently making it acceptable that being a midget was no barrier to becoming king. On a mission to Friesland on the coast of the North Sea, the Friesians whacked him for his efforts in 754. He is buried in the Benedictine abbey in Fulda.

The people in this area were very devout Catholics and on Sundays I used to sneak into their church to watch the show. I was intrigued by the seductive show the priest put on, the aroma of the smoke wafting about, the spritzing of the holy water, the Latin liturgy. But I had to be careful, because if the priest spotted me, he’d have me turfed out, because I was a heretic in his eyes and not allowed inside the church. In retrospect, that probably was a good thing. I might have gotten hooked by their spiel.

The highlight of the religious calendar in that region was May 11th, the name day of St. Gangolf, the patron saint of tanners, cobblers, children and horses. Every year on that day, the locals made a pilgrimage to a small chapel, built in 1493 and dedicated to this saint on the top of the Milseburg, an extinct volcano which rose behind my house. I used to watch the procession, led by their priest in flowing white robes, followed by altar boys, also in white robes, carrying crosses, buckets of holy water and strange smelling smoking pots, which they swung back and forth, praying and singing, make their way past our house and up the steep path to the top of the mountain to the St. Gangolf chapel. He had been an 8th century Burgundian knight and owner of an abbey in the employ of Pepin. He was murdered by his wife’s lover, a priest. His relics are kept in a church in the Franconian city of Bamberg. Some of the real fervent pilgrims did the ascent on their knees. That must have really hurt because the path was steep and rough and strewn with rocks. They didn't believe in knee pads.

This pilgrimage up the mountain was a fine show and I would have loved to join them, but my friend Richard, one of the altar boys, told me that was impossible, because I was a heretic. He wasn’t too sure what that meant, but he was certain I was one, because his priest had told him I was a Lutheran and thus condemned to purgatory. Not to be totally left out, I used to stalk the procession from the bushes on either side of the path, making my way up the mountain parallel to the line of believers on my secret hunting trails, cursing my misfortune of being a pagan. I would lay in wait in some thicket and pepper the priest with my pea-shooter. I hated that curate for making me a heathen and not letting me be part of the show.

I was a pretty good shot and didn’t miss often. To make it count, I aimed for the back of his head and neck, which soon looked like he had come down with a case of German measles. The priest had no idea who was tormenting him. The altar boys, who marched right behind him, started sniggering and laughing, when they saw what was happening. The priest was fuming and glanced around to try to spot the miscreant who was harassing him, but couldn’t really do anything because he was leading the procession and the prayers. He endured. Maybe he identified with St. Boniface and his martyrdom at the hands of those pagan Friesians.

When the procession got to the top of the mountain, everyone tried to crowd in behind the priest and the altar boys into the little church, which stood beneath three massive stone crosses on the summit of the mountain. But it held no more than maybe 25 people and most of the crowd had to stand outside and try to listen to what the priest had to say. There were no loudspeakers, so it was hard to hear what went on inside. Soon the men started to drift off towards a stone hut a few feet lower down the mountain, a pub and way station for mountain climbers and hikers. They served food and liquor there. Beer and schnapps flowed. The smell of sausages and sauerkraut wafted across the mountaintop and I felt even lonelier and excluded. To be seen in the pub was out of the question. Everyone would soon figure out who had tormented their priest on the way up.

By the time the service was over, most of the men and older boys were fairly drunk. The priest joined them for beer and sausages. He could hold his own when it came to booze. Quite soon, though, the more pious women insisted that they started back down the mountain. The descent was not an orderly procession like the ascent. The men stumbled and fell and it was a miracle no one tumbled down the steep ravines and crevasses next to the path and killed himself. That had never happened, as far as I know. Some of the villagers did sport bandages and limped pretty badly the next day.

I paralleled their descent in the bushes above their path and I wished that I could have been a part of their show, particularly the beer and sausage part. The priest, who was feeling no pain after his stop at the pub, nevertheless was nervous and kept looking around for his erstwhile tormentor. I would have loved to make his day for him, but I was out of peas. He should have paid more attention to where he was going, because he slipped and crashed down into the rubble and boulders below the path. The men scrambled down after him and dragged him back up to the path. He looked pretty banged up and his robes were ripped, but he was able to walk. He was yelling and gesticulating wildly, cussing and swearing that he would soon find the devil responsible for his misery and he set off into the bushes to look for the culprit. I high-tailed it out of there and made my way home.

My friend Richard told me the next day that their pilgrimage had kind of disintegrated into a scramble through the bushes, with the priest leading the way and invoking the assistance of St. Gangolf to help catch the devil who had caused him to crash down the ravine. My friend thought that it was the liquor not the devil that was at fault. I didn’t enlighten him.