Meinrad of Einsiedeln

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Saint Meinrad is a Roman Catholic saint. Born into the family of the Counts of Hohenzollern, Meinrad was educated at the abbey school of Reichenau, an island in Lake Constance, under his kinsmen Abbots Hatto and Erlebald, where he became a monk and was ordained. After some years at Reichenau, the dependent priory of Bollingen and on Lake Zurich, he embraced an eremitical life and established his hermitage on the slopes of Mt. Etzel, taking with him a wonder-working statue of Our Lady which he had been given by the Abbess Hildegarde of Zurich. He died in 861 at the hands of robbers who coveted the treasures offered at the shrine by devout pilgrims, but during the next eighty years the place was never without one or more hermits emulating Saint Meinrad's example. One of them, named Eberhard, previously Provost of Strasburg, erected a monastery and church there, of which he became first abbot. This monastery is Einsiedeln Abbey.