Saint Morand of Altkirch

Frederick, Count of Ferrett Frédéric, comte de Ferrette Count who requested the dispatch of monks to Altkirch. e, having asked the Abbot of Cluny for religious men to serve the church o f Altkir Altkirch Principal site of the apostolate and burial of Morand. ch, which his ancestors had founded, and to establish a monastic institute there, Saint Hugh made no difficulty in granting them; but those he sent at first, not knowing the language of the country, did not produce all the fruits of salvation that one might have expected; that is why he delegated Morand, who was equally instructed in the French and German languages. He had barely arrived in Altkirch when, by his word as well as by his examples, he led a great number of men to a holier life. He performed miracles during his life and after his death.

With a sign of the cross, he extinguished a fire that had broken out at the monastery; he cured Count Frederick of paralysis; he restored health to Udalric, a farmer of the monastery, who was suffering from quartan fever. Two women were tormented by demons: he offered the holy sacrifice of the Mass for them, performed exorcisms, and delivered them from all suffering. He died exhausted by old age, and since then he has effectively assisted many of the sick and possessed who visited his tomb. All these miracles having been proven by witnesses, the Bishop of B l'évêque de Bâle Prelate who requested the canonization of Morand. asel obtained from the Pope that Morand be numbered among the Saints.

Saint Morand was very devoted to the Blessed Virgin, and his memory is linked to two Marian sanctuaries still standing in Alsace today: Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows in Gildwiller in the canton of Dannemarie; and Our Lady of Altkirch.

Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows in Gildwiller is considered the oldest pilgrimage in Alsace. According to tradition, the wooded height where this chapel is located originally served for druidic assemblies; and there, as at Chartres, the Virgin who was to give birth was honored. The first apostles of Alsace, taking advantage of this Christian notion, established the cult of Mary there; signal graces were obtained there, and thus a very frequented pilgrimage was formed from the first centuries of our era. It became even more so from the second half of the eleventh century, when Saint Morand, Abbot of Altkirch, animated by saint Morand Cluniac monk and apostle of Alsace, patron saint of winemakers. a tender devotion to Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, was seen going there on pilgrimage every Friday. A few steps from the church, a spring gushes forth which is still called the little fountain of Saint Morand, because there, it is said, after having satisfied his devotion at Gildwiller, he would rest and eat his bread before returning to his monastery. Fridays, especially during Lent, are the days when the faithful come in greater numbers to Gildwiller, and on the Friday of the Passion, they celebrate its patronal feast.

Notre-Dame d'Altkirch, built in the middle of the 13th century under the title of the Assumption by Saint Morand himself, is the principal sanctuary of this canton.

Hardly had the edifice been completed when people came there in great numbers from the city and the surrounding areas; and the feasts of the Virgin were celebrated there with special solemnity. In 1280, a confraternity of the Blessed Virgin was founded there, in which a multitude of communes, high and powerful lords, magistrates, and bourgeois immediately enrolled.

Towards the end of the fourteenth century, a miraculous event, which authentic and contemporary documents attest to, further increased the attendance and confidence. According to the account of the Bollandists, a band of the forty thousand adventurers, so sadly known in history under the name of the Great Companies or the Malandrins, had entered, under the cover of a dark night, into the city of Altkirch to pillage it and deliver it to the flames, when Mary appeared to them, dazzling with light, near the church consecrated to her. At this sight, the enemy horde, seized with terror, took flight, and Altkirch was saved. If, in the middle of the sixteenth century, the heretical bands stirred up by the furious preaching of Luther came in their turn to pillage this church along with the convent, and to murder the religious, the pilgrims did not cease to come to pray and weep over the ruins. These ruins themselves r ose again glorious compagnie de Jésus Teaching order that educated Josaphat. ly in 1620, thanks to the Society of Jesus, to which Archduke Leopold ceded the priory of Saint-Morand. The sons of Saint Ignatius rebuilt the house on more vast proportions, and erected inside an elegant chapel, on the place where, according to tradition, Saint Morand had died. Through their preaching as well as their writings, they reawakened the faith throughout the country, the faithful returned to the pilgrimage as in the most beautiful days of ancient times, and Notre-Dame d'Altkirch recovered all its splendor.

During the revolutionary turmoil, the church was closed; it was reopened as soon as order was restored; and since then, the number of pilgrims there has always been considerable, especially on June 3rd, the Fridays of Lent, and the Fridays after the Ember weeks, to which the Holy See has attached a plenary indulgence, provided that one receives communion there.

Saint Morand is the patron of winemakers in t he Sund Suadgau Region of Alsace where Morand is the patron saint of winemakers. gau. To explain this patronage, an old popular biography claims that the Saint spent an entire Lent with no other food than a bunch of grapes.

Be that as it may, he is depicted pressing the juice of this fruit into a barrel.

Proper of Strasbourg. — Cf. Notre-Dame de France.