Melanie McDonagh follows Pope Benedict XVI to the feet of Our Lady of Altötting.
To begin with, I didn’t think I was going to like Altötting, Pope Benedict XVI’s favourite place of pilgrim-age. I had booked a room in a pilgrim hotel in May, so I was indignant when I arrived at the beginning of July to find that the Glockerlwirt was, that day, shut. I tried three doors; no luck. But a kindly lady in the clothes shop next door noticed my efforts and said her mother worked there; she would phone to ask what was happening. Her mother got hold of the cook and he turned up to let me in. The hotel was empty and he had to phone the owner to find my key, and when I got to my room I found that the bath I’d asked for was in fact a shower. Moreover I’d travelled by rail and German trains don’t run on time.
Chiz, chiz. The hardships of pilgrimage.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that when I reached the 15th-century shrine of Our Lady in the Gnadenkapelle, the octagonal chapel at the heart of Altötting, I was in an unreasonably sour mood. But it is impossible to enter that little dark space, glowing with the light of a silver altar, and look at the blackened little limewood figure of the Virgin and Child, clothed in stiff jewelled vestments, and not feel moved.
At either side of the shrine are two kneeling silver figures: the Prince Elector Konrad from 1737 bowing gracefully with his hand on his heart and his sword sheathed; and St Conrad, the Capuchin friar who lived here and whose image is everywhere in Altötting. On the wall opposite is the reliquary of the heart of Duke Ludwig of Bavaria, builder of fairytale castles.
The altar is a riot of silver and gold, with the figures of the Holy Trinity holding up a crown for Our Lady below. To either side, there are reliefs of the heads of patriarchs as Renaissance gentlemen. Set into the walls of the octagon above us were alcoves, where there gleamed ex-voto images of body parts or figures healed at the intercession of the Virgin. At one side is the Golden Rose presented to the Virgin of Altötting by Pope Benedict himself. The small dark space, the exuberant silver and gold and the quiet of the place has a curiously hypnotic effect. The windows are set into the little cupola at the top, so the light is indirect, or comes from the door leading into the little chapel outside.
There is space for at most 10 or 12 people in the octagonal shrine, and we squeezed into the little curved benches set in each side for a curiously intimate Mass at six in the morning. In the chapel outside a man stood praying before the picture of the Virgin, in an old fashioned Bavarian jacket. This is a place where masculine spirituality is still evident, the kind with which Pope Benedict grew up in a little village 15 kilometres away.
The roof and walls of the walkway around the chapel have pictures from the 16th century showing the miracles that have been worked here, or from here. The figure of the Virgin was brought to Altötting in 1330, and in 1489 it became a destination for pilgrims in the wake of the miracles that were reported. A succession of pictures on the walls show some of the original ones – the raising of a dead child, the healing of a mother who had become insane and was trying to harm her children… a succession of wonders.
But it’s the pictures from more modern times that capture the imagination, covering the walls and ceiling of the walkway and the walls of the chapel. Maria hat geholfen – Mary helped – is the motto, and they depict the ways prayers were answered. The earliest date from the 17th century; the latest include the picture of a woman healed from coronavirus. All have a quality of engaging naivety but the contemporary ones are mostly hideous.
They range over centuries from a man saved from being eaten by a ravening bear to men preserved from death by runaway cattle or horses, to families kept safe from burning buildings. There’s a moving account in Gothic script from the 17th century of how the people of a town stricken by plague came to Altötting bearing their half-finished candles at a time of wax scarcity when the chapel was down to its last four candles. There are pictures of a 1930s car smash, of six brothers and three sisters praying for their sibling, of a woman (quite recently) with a nice baby produced after praying to the Virgin. There are 19th-century women in black praying for healing; lots of sickbeds; a depiction of a modern operating theatre where a four-year-old was saved. And there are the war images: a German soldier in uniform, giving thanks for coming home safely from the Great War; a Russian prisoner of war camp with watchtower from which the supplicant came home in 1948 (so many didn’t) and a picture of a village being strafed by planes – Allied planes – giving thanks for its preservation during the bombing. All human life is there, the times when Mary helped.
The square where the Gnadenkapelle, or “chapel of grace”, sits is the centre of the town; around it there are handsome buildings with a selection of religious artefact shops. This is the place for figures of the Virgin of Altötting but you can also get cherubs (heads or whole), wax infant Jesuses, little figures in a half goose egg, decorated by nuns, and cribs. It’s as well to ask which are made by hand (the expensive ones) and in Germany.
There are other lovely churches near the square. The Stiftspfarrkirche is late-Gothic and very handsome; the panels of the great wooden doors show weighty medieval bishops and nobles, with a dog or a pelican tucked between them. Inside, at the top of a very tall clock, the skeleton figure of Death with his scythe swings around forever. Nearby there’s the Jesuit church of St Mary Magdalene in magnificent airy baroque. Next door is the meeting hall of the Marian men’s congregation, a beautiful baroque room with painted ceiling. A little further away there’s the late-Gothic church of St Thomas, with a late-medieval wall painting, showing the Virgin and St John the Baptist interceding for mankind at the Day of Judgment.
Bavarian food is famously hearty: excellent bread; dumplings; quantities of meat. At the Glockerlwirt where I stayed and which was in the end very decent, there’s a good garden where you can watch nuns enjoy a glass of beer with half a chicken, and have a strudel. Or there’s the elegant Munchner Hof on the town square, with a good Bavarian menu. This is the land of beer; I say, drink it.
Melanie travelled with Trainline to Altötting via Paris, Stuttgart and Muhldorf. German trains are not always reliable. Where there is little time for making a connection it is possible to take the next available train. Otherwise, book each leg of the journey separately with Trainline to allow for delays; or fly to Munich and take a train via Muhldorf.
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