EINSIEDELN, ain'zi-deln (MARIA EINSIEDELN)
A town of Switzerland (9 m. e.n.e. of Schwyz),
containing (1900) about 4,000 inhabitants, and
famous as a place of Roman Catholic pilgrimage. Monastic life there dates back to the ninth
century, and
is connected with the legend of St.
Meginrad or Meinrad, who is said to have come from
the region near Rottenburg or Hechingen. He
first lived in a cell, perhaps at Bollingen near Rap-
persweil, but yielding to his desire for a hermit's
life, is said to have gone to the summit of Mount
Etzel, and thence to the still more impenetrable
wilderness of the mountain forests. There he is
said to have tamed two ravens, which, when be was
murdered by robbers in 861, followed the criminals
to Zurich and convicted them of the crime. It
was not until the tenth century, however, that a
monastery was erected in this region, when Benno
and Eberhard are said to have made the first at
tempts to gather monks about the deserted cell of
Meinrad. Authentic history begins with 947, when
Otto I. granted immunity to the cell and to Eber
hard, and allowed the free choice of an abbot. Otto
L, Otto II., and Henry II. gave rich gifts to the
cloister, and until the thirteenth century the control
was in the hands of the counts of Rappersweil.
After the time of Rudolf, on the other hand, it was
controlled by the house of Austria, and was accord
ingly involved in the struggles between the Swiss
Confederacy and the Hapsburgs. The Sempach
war broke all bonds which held Einsiedeln to Aus
tria, and after the end of the fourteenth century
the monastery belonged to the Canton of Schwyz,
although it was decaying rapidly when Zwingli was
its parish priest.
The Zurich Reformation depopulated Einsiedeln,
but under the administration of the first civil abbot,
Joachim Eichhorn (1544-69), it revived, and in the
seventeenth century, during the rule of Placidua
Reymann, the
Documenia archivii Einsidleresis
were printed, while the librarian of the monastery,
Christof Hartmann, wrote its history in his
Annales
Heremi
(Freiburg, 1612). The monastery was
burned repeatedly, but underwent no essential
change until 1798, when it was entirely destroyed
by the invasion of the French and the establishment
of the Helvetian Republic. In 1801 its
restoration was begun and its importance steadily
increased, until at its millennial celebration in 1861,
it contained nearly 100 monks, and a daughter
house was founded in the United Staten by Abbot
Heinrich at St. Meinrad, Ind., in 1854.
Einsiedeln is ~ especially famous as a center of
pilgrimage from Switzerland, the neighboring dis
tricts of Germany, and from France and Austria.
These pilgrimages began in the tenth century, and
in 1895 reached the number of 210,000. The
chief day is Sept. 14, regarded as the date of the
divine dedication of the church in 948. The center
of devotion is a statue of the Virgin, originally fiesh
colored, but blackened by the smoke of the lights
and lamps which burn continually. It stands in
a small chapel in the church of the cloister, which,
like all the buildings, was erected in the eighteenth
century.
(G. Meyer von Knonau.)
Bibliography:
O.
Ringhola, Wallfahrtageschichte unaerer
lichen Frau von Einaiedeln, Freiburg, 1896; idem, Geschichte
den füstlichen Benediktinerstiftea .: . von Ein
aiedeln, Einaiedeln, 1902 sqq. (in
progress); A. Huhn,
Der jetzipe Sliflabau Maria-Einaiedeln, ib. 1885. Earlier
materials will be found in T. von Mohr's Repeaten der
Archive in der Schweizerischen EidgenoaaenarAaft, vol. i.,
Bern, 1848; Liber Heremi, ed. G. Morel, in Geschichte-
freund, vol. i.. Einaiedeln. 1843; G, von Wyss Ue6erdie
Antiquitakmoraalerii . . Enidlenaia and ,den Liber
Hersmi, in Jahrbuch far aehmeiseriade Geschichte, vol. a.,
lass.
