Sources: John Dixon Salt, Wikipedia, Patron Saints index, BOA
Museum, Paul Aangenendt, and The Liturgical Year, by Dom Guéranger,
www.mont-sainte-odile.com
Saint Odilia, (circa 660 - 720; Ottilia, Othilia, Otilie,
Adilia, Odile; Virgin and Abbess,
patron of the vision, eye disease and eye problems, and opticians) the patron
saint of Alsace and Strasbourg, was according to legend the daughter of Lord
Adalric, a leader of the Alemanni, and first duke of Alsace; her mother was
Bereswind (Berchsind), said to be the niece of St Leodegarius. They lived at
Obernheim in the Vosges Mountains, about 20 miles south of Strasburg (eastern
France), at the foot of the hill of Hohenburg or Altitonia.
For years they had no children but finally, in answer to their
prayers they had a child. They had hoped to have a son, but Adalric’s joy turned
to rage when he realized his child was not only female, but blind. He felt
humiliated and ordered the child to be killed, or at least to be taken away and
left to die. At the same time he had it proclaimed with trumpets that the
duchess had given birth to a stillborn child. Bereswind’s faithful nurse took
the baby and nursed it as her own at Scherweiler. About a year later, the child
was given to the convent of Baume-les-Dames (Palma), near Besancon, in Franche
Compte, or by some variants of the legend, she floated down the river to Beaume
in a chest.
At the age of twelve, she was baptised by Saint Erhard of
Regensburg (then Bishop of Bavaria), abbot of the newly built monastery of
Eberheim-Munster. Odilia miraculously gained her sight and looked steadily at
Erhard, who said, "So, my child, may you look at me in the kingdom of heaven."
Adalric and Bereswind had several other children, and when
their eldest son Hugh was grown up, he located his sister and without asking his
father’s permission, brought her home. The Duke was so angry that he struck and
killed the brother; but horrified at his own violence, he accepted his daughter
and did penance for his crime. Her personal beauty, and her father's wealth and
power, began to attract many rich suitors. A nun from England became a servant
to attend to Odilia and when her parents planned a marriage for her with a
German duke, she fled her home and crossed the Rhine. In 686, Adalric found her
one day carrying meal in an earthen dish, under her cloak, to make food for the
poor. Since he had already begun to give alms and endowments for the good of his
soul, he gave Odilia his castle of Hohenburg, with all its lands and revenues,
that she might make it into a nunnery (modern Odilienburg/Mont Sainte-Odile).
The hill of Hohenburg rises over 2,000 feet abruptly from the
valley of the Rhine. It had a pre-Christian wall around it, still called the
heathen wall, and there was a plateau on top, on which the monastery was built.
Within ten years the place had a hundred and thirty nuns, amongst whom were the
three daughters of her brother Adelard, St Eugenia, her successor, St Attala,
abbess of St Stephen's at Strasburg, and St Gundelind. There Odilia served her
Lord, governed a large community, and gave relief to every sort of suffering.
In the 7th and 8th centuries there were frequent pilgrimages
to Hohenburg, but Odilia's hill was so high and steep that very few of the
pilgrims managed to climbed to seek her hospitality; so at the foot of the
mountain and with the approval of her community, she founded the Odilienberg
monastery at Niedermunster. There she entertained such numbers of pilgrims that
very soon the two chapels which Adalric had built were too small that she begged
him to build a large church, which he did in 690. Olilia’s parents both died
shortly afterwards. Then she died December13, 720 and was buried in a chapel
near the convent church on the Odilienberg. The tomb where once Odilia's body
originally lay was evidently destroyed in 1793. In recent times, an abbey has
been founded by a new Benedictine congregation at Sankt Ottilien, between Munich
and Augburg.
Odilia shares the same feast day, December 13th , as Saint
Lucy, while her shrine on the Odilienburg is still a celebrated place of
pilgrimage, visited by devout pilgrims and those afflicted with blindness or
other eye diseases. She also gave her name to the Guild of St Odilia (Consulting
Opticians) early this century. In art, she is frequently depicted as an abbess
with a book on which are two eyes. She can therefore be easily distinguished
from Saint Lucy, who is shown much younger and with two eyes on a plate.
Some eye conditions cannot be helped by operations, medicines,
or eyeglasses. Although the invoked stories of Odelia and the other saints of
the eyes may be the consequence of both fact and fiction, this still provides
the hope of a miraculous cure for some believing patients.
