Spent the morning at the Benedictine abbey, which sits above the city and dominates it. Once a place where monks studied and royalty sojourned, it is now a religious museum and library, with a secondary school, a botanical garden, a restaurant, and two gift shops. It’s full of curiosities. These especially struck me:
- The walls of the inner courtyard depict the virtues held in highest regard: Fortitude, Moderation, Wisdom, and Justice. But what of the Seven Holy Virtues: Humility, Kindness, Abstinence, Chastity, Patience, Liberality, and Diligence? It’s discouraging when holy people disagree about the nature of virtue.
- A fascinating portrait gallery lies inside, and there hangs one of Empress Maria Teresa. Her skin is a sickly white, the very image of “death warmed over.” I’m pretty sure she didn’t get out in the sun much, but I think it’s likely the artist helped her to look “fashionable.”
- Her son, Joseph II, as Holy Roman Emperor, decreed that coffins be reusable. A model, complete with ejection lever, was on display. Don’t imagine that the waiting lists were very long.
- The patron saint of the abbey, an obscure fellow named Koloman, is buried there. Well, most of him is. Some centuries back, they found his head in Hungary and much of the rest in Austria. Anyway, he was hanged from a dead elderberry tree, the story goes, and afterward the tree bloomed again, even though it was winter. What’s really appealing about this tale is that its creator isn’t satisfied in having a dead tree bloom. He needs to push any doubters over the line by making it wintertime, too. In one of the museum rooms, there stands the bejeweled likeness of an elderberry tree. Koloman’s lower jaw bone is set within the lower branches of the tree.
- In another room there hangs a bejeweled cross that is said to contain a piece of the true cross. A pretty ho-hum claim next to the Koloman insanity, if you ask me.
We saw nothing else of Melk, save for a glimpse of the countryside as we traversed from the abbey’s museum to its library.
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After lunch, we mounted to the sun deck of the ship to see the sights as we sailed through the Wachau Valley toward Vienna. We braved a strong wind for the pleasure of seeing the lovely towns on the banks of the Danube. None was lovelier than Duernstein, home of the elegant Duernstein Abbey and the castle, now in ruins, where Leopoldo V held King Richard Lionhearted captive during the Third Crusade. I was fortunate to get both in one picture.
Tomorrow, Vienna.
The Scratching Post 