The story of the hermit Gerold, who turned his back on the sinful world and retreated into the Vorarlberg forest, shows a friendlier side to the erstwhile king of the forest. A bear that was being chased by a count and his dogs and nearly dead from exhaustion fled into the hermitage and laid his head subserviently into the hermit’s lap. The hermit blessed the animal and commanded the hounds to be quiet. Deeply moved by this miracle, the hunter jumped from his horse and took a knee in front of the holy man. He gave him the piece of land and the wood to build a cloister.
What is being expressed in these saints’ legends that are often almost interchangeably similar? Clearly, the new cloister culture was competing for the bear’s habitat because it was seen as pleasing to God to clear the dark forest and expand the area of cultivation where wheat and vineyards could grow. The legends also show the power of the new Christian moralism that was replacing the old natural, instinctive native way of life. The bear, which in this case represents the old heathen ways, learns to obey and do good deeds. Likewise, the heathen peoples are being wrested away from the devil and subjugated by the Church. It is highly probable that the bears in these stories are again not real bears but either heathen bearskins or feral people who had retreated into the forests. Besides incorrigible animists, the forest sheltered outcasts, escaped servants and vassals, and others who lived a bear-like and wild life in caves.1 They were seen as fair game, and the nobles sometimes made a sport of hunting them down and killing them like any other wild animals—bears, wolves, wild boars, and other game.
Saint Columba and Saint Gall with bears (L. Auers, Heiligenlegende, 1962)
According to legend, wild people were naked or dressed in furs, had matted hair, and gathered or stole their food—fruit, roots, sheaves, and animals—at night. They loved music and dancing, carried clubs, and were shy but willing enough to be of service when captured. A subject of fascination all throughout the Middle Ages, they live on even today in carnival customs and costumes in Alpine countries in Europe. They were believed to have similar abilities as bears, such as being able to foresee the weather, find iron ore, and know the secrets of all the healing plants. But especially their alleged sexual instinct excited the imagination of the pious Christians. In the legend of Wolf-Dietrich of Berne, we hear about the wild woman who desired the knight:
When the master fell asleep, the wild woman came
To the fire and saw the prince’s body.
Walking on all fours, she looked like a bear;
Are you quite of this world, which devil brought you here?
Because the young knight rejected her she put a spell on him, so that he
had to stray through the woods for half a year and eat roots and herbs.
After Wolf-Dietrich gave in and slept with her, the story ended happily.
She accepted his faith and a miracle happened.
She was baptized, until then called Rough Ilse,
she was now called Siegesminne, the most beautiful far and wide.
Feral man and woman
The Bear Goddess in Nun’s Attire
Rather than become fully bedeviled and banned, many of the gods of the Mediterranean region simply changed their form. Suddenly, they appeared as saints and still populate Christian calendars as well as altars and niches in the walls of the churches. In this way, virginal Artemis, the bear goddess, made her way into the Christian era as a Christian virgin. She appeared as Columba the Virgin, who lived at the time of Christian persecution under emperor Aurelius. After her pursuers had put her in a dungeon because of her beliefs, coarse henchmen aimed to amuse themselves by raping her, but a bear that happened to live in the back of the dungeon defended her. She was later put to death as a martyr—tied up, slashed and torn with a hook, and beheaded—but, thanks to the bear, she had remained a virgin.
The cult of the goddess Artemis used to be celebrated in a bear’s den on the peninsula Akrotiri, on the island of Crete. The bear goddess transformed into “the sacred Virgin Mary of the Bear,” and her festival is held, significantly, on Candlemas Day. A bear-shaped dripstone that used to be the centerpiece of the heathen cult is now interpreted to be a bear that, upon disturbing Mary when she was drinking some water, was turned into stone.
The bear also appears in the legend of the arch martyr Thecla, an attractive maiden from a distinguished household who did not want to succumb to fleshly pleasures and refused to marry. So she dressed as a man, followed the apostle Paul, and was baptized by him. Her family was so upset with her that her own mother reported her to the governor who was a notorious Christian persecutor. She was arrested and thrown to the wild animals. When a bear was about to maul her, a lion, in answer to her prayer for aid, lunged and saved her. After then living to ninety-one years old despite much persecution and castigation, the saint left this world by entering a cave that closed behind her forever.
Killing a wild man (Pieter Brueghel the Elder, sixteenth century)
In the form of Saint Richardis we find another bear saint—this time, once again, in the Alemannic region. This daughter of an Alsatian prince was the wife of Emperor Charles the Fat. Accused of adultery, she took the test of fire and passed it. But afterward, she had had enough of the world and its ungodly doings and decided to devote her life to religious service in the name of the Lord. She retreated into the forest to live as a recluse, and there she met a bear that showed her a cave where she could set up a hermitage. A cloister was eventually built above this bear den at the foot of the Vosges Mountains in Alsace. Soon, it was discovered that the cave had healing power, especially for leg ailments. From the eleventh century onward, a bear was kept in the crypt and each pilgrim who came in the hope of being healed was required to give the bear trainer three coins (guldens) and a loaf of bread to the bear.
Forest Demons and Malicious Wild Animals
The Christians did away with animal worship; especially magical, sacred animals such as the bear, the wolf, and the raven were stripped of their divine nimbus. The bear, as the totem of warriors, ancestral spirits, bringer of fertility, and companion of the great goddess (by then degraded to a witch) now had to do compulsory service for the Church at the command of the saints (a similar punishment as given to the cheated devil). The bear had to haul heavy rocks to build churches and bridges, plow fields, gather wood, or even herd sheep, as for Saint Eutychius, for instance. However, the bear remained an ominous animal that possessed magical power. The more the animal was bedeviled, the more the fear of it grew.
Bear in a monk’s cloak (unknown artist)
The same courtesies the bear bestowed on the Christian saints it had actually bestowed on magicians and shamans in earlier times. The bear was their companion and animal of power. In medieval times, the bear was believed to serve non-baptized beings by, for example, watching over the devil’s treasures or pulling the wagon for the mythological mountain spirit, Ruebezahl. People continued to only whisper its name because, just like the devil, the bear would come when called. People also believed that bears, like forest devils do, steal the colors from ferns and play other tricks.
The bear as a mount for a demon (from Jean Wier, Pseudomonarchia daemonum, sixteenth century)
The Church forbade contact with bears just like it forbade contact with evil spirits. The ecumenical council not only banned belief in astrology, interpretation of signs, reverence of nature, and other heathen practices but also the practices of keeping tame bears, wearing bear claws, and selling bear hair as medicine. The Quinisext Council decreed that former pagans who committed such crimes be sent to prison for six years. However, ninth-century artists were allowed to depict dancing bears.
Here and there, such as in Norway, for instance, farmers believed that bears protected their sheep, cattle, and goats from wolves. As a reward, they granted a bear one of the farm animals in the fall simply by turning a blind eye when a bear took one. In some communities in Allgaeu, Germany, farmers would put out the first calf born in the spring in the hopes that the
bear would then leave the rest of the animals in peace on the summer pastures. But generally, people tried to avoid the bear, crossing themselves when they met the shaggy beast and reciting the traditional bear blessing from Saint Gall: “In nomini domini [in God’s name] my Jesu Christi, move on and retreat from our valley, you forest beast! Your territory is on the mountain and in the gorges. Leave us and our pasture animals in peace!”
An Alpine blessing, which is part of a larger blessing that used to be called out at night high up in the Alps for protection, goes like this:
Saint Peter, take your keys in the right hand.
Lock away the bear’s gait,
the wolf’s teeth,
the lynx’s claws,
the raven’s beak,
the dragon’s tail,
the vulture’s flight.
Protect us Lord from such dreadful hour,
that such animals bite or claw . . .”
One can see that the more these Christians tried to ban their own “sinful” animal nature, the more they began to fear wild animals in the forest. Bears became increasingly demonized as the incarnation of unruly powers. Saint Peter’s keys locked it away from the communities of good people. To meet up with the king of the animals was no longer awe-inspiring; instead, it only caused fear in humans and thus defensive reactions in bears. Nothing makes bears more aggressive than panicky people; or can they perhaps read thoughts as the Siberians and Native Americans claim?
Traveling artists with dancing bear (woodcut by Hans Weiditz, Augsburg, 1513)
Rigid medieval imagination divided the entire creation into good and evil, into creatures that were pleasing to God and those that had been ruined by Satan. Bruin found himself ever more on the wrong side in this kind of scheme. Believing they were doing deeds pleasing to God, people hunted down bears and wolves with almost fanatical determination—with poison, lances, crossbows, brutal traps, pitfalls, and nets. Accompanied by drums, trumpets, screeching women, and barking dogs, hundreds of hunters swarmed to drive out from their hiding places the “thrashing beasts” and “ferocious wild animals.” Bears were lured with honey, doused with brandy, and killed or taken into cruel captivity. (A liquor made from honey has its origin in eastern Prussia, in Germany, and is called Baerenfang, or bear trap.) It was not a rare sight to see a bear tied to a pole in the village square, eyes blinded, beaten until it had open wounds, and desperately trying to defend itself from the whipping and the dogs that were tormenting it. For the masses, the spectacle was less a gruesome form of entertainment than a moral edification. The bear incorporated sin and the devil, and the display showed how it had met up with its just fate.2
Animal researchers believe that bears actually did become more aggressive in the Middle Ages. The more often people intruded into their habitat so that they could not search for acorns, roots, and berries in peace, the more often they—driven by hunger—killed tame animals. Once the inhibition threshold has been crossed, a bear can turn into a habitual thief.
In the following tale about the mill bear, we can see how the once sacred animal had become a demonized being:
A spirit bear haunted a mill near Niederbronn in Alsace. The miller became desperate, fearing poverty and the ruin of his mill. No handworkers were willing to fix anything there and no apprentice stayed longer than one night. However, one day a perky young fellow showed up and offered his services. He had heard a bear spirit haunted the mill, but he was not afraid of it.
That night the wind was favorable, and the windmill blades turned at a good pace. The young man set to work. Toward midnight, he stretched out on some bags of flour to rest up. Just as he was about to nod off, a creaking could be heard. A black bear trotted in and sniffed the cases and bags. When it saw the apprentice, it lifted its paw.
But the apprentice was prepared. He had a freshly sharpened axe right next to him. He defended himself with the axe and cut off the paw of the attacker. The bear left the mill howling loudly.
Parading a captured bear in Valais, Switzerland (eighteenth century)
The master was happy to see the apprentice in good shape and content the next morning when he came in for breakfast. But there was no porridge—the miller’s wife was not there. They found her moaning and feverish in bed. And her lower arm was missing! She was exposed as a wicked witch and arrested.
Who is this black witch who appears as a bear? Knowers of mythology will recognize the grain goddess, the grain mother, who appeared in pagan times as a bear or accompanied by a bear. Now, having been banned from consciousness, she has become an evil nocturnal spook—so it happens to all gods and goddesses who are no longer honored and are pushed into the unconscious. They become black demons of the night.
Brother Klaus’s Bear of Light
The visions of Swiss saint Nicolaus von Fluee show a pleasant picture by comparison. Brother Klaus was a poor mountain peasant but had shown himself to be a courageous warrior and councilman. One day—it happened to be October 16th, the patron day of Saint Gall—he left his wife and ten children and retreated into the forest as a hermit. It is said that he lived for twenty years from nothing but the sacrament, from bread and wine. Princes and rulers made pilgrimages to his hermitage to ask him for advice, and, thanks to his clear spirit, he was even able to hinder a civil war in Switzerland. He also had interesting dreams and visions while he was living in his hermitage.
Nicolas von Fluee, 1417–1487
In one of his visions that shook him to the core, a magnificent wayfarer appeared to him. He had a wide-brimmed hat, a walking stick, and a large cloak. The wayfarer began to sing and it seemed like the entire creation sang along. The Pilatus Mountain (near Lucerne, Switzerland) sank down to the level of the earth and the blessed ones—the dead—appeared. In the midst of this overwhelming scene, the clothes of the wayfarer changed, and suddenly he stood in front of the monk dressed in bear’s fur. The fur was sprinkled with a radiant gold color. Brother Klaus felt that the stranger had communicated to him the mysteries of heaven and earth.
It was surely “Woutis” (Wotan), the god of his Alemannic ancestors, who had entered his subconscious and taken shape in his vision. (Wotan, the wayfarer, is known to appear with a wide-brimmed hat, staff or spear, and a wide cloak). Brother Klaus had been able to recognize this old god and not see him as a devil—as was usually the case in the Middle Ages; he had united the vision with his steadfast Christian faith and had seen the radiant divine bear, the chieftain of the dead spirits that lived in the mountain (Burri 1982, 97).
In another vision, three noble-looking men appeared to him. They asked him whether he would put himself with body and soul into their hands. The hermit answered, “I will not give myself to anyone but almighty God.” After hearing this, the three men laughed merrily and prophesied that goodly God would free him of his earthly burden in his seventieth year of life, and then they gave him “a bear claw and the banner of the mighty army.”
Who may the three men have been? They were probably the ancestral gods, Wotan, Donar, and Tyr. They could laugh merrily with this saint because he did not ban them back into darkness. His Christianity was not exclusive, narrow, and dogmatic. So they blessed him with the power of the bear, as well as his ancestors, the Alemannic warriors. In this way, Brother Klaus helped the Alemannic soul reconcile with the inflexible beliefs that the Irish-Scottish monks had brought to his country.
Chapter 15
Bear Plants, Bear Medicine
In the forest a leaf falls from a tree:
The eagle can see it,
the coyote can hear it,
but the bear can smell the falling leaf.
Native American proverb
When spring thunderstorms clash and the godly bear, Thor, smashes the bones of the cantankerous ice giants with his lightning hammer until their icy stronghold turns into thaw water, it is time for the terrestrial bear to leave its paradise of sweet dreams and come out of its den. After the long winter, Bruin does not look as mighty as usual.
The bear has lost a lot of weight—about one third of its normal bulk—and its fur looks like a worn-out coat dangling around its bones. During the long winter sleep, the bear does not urinate or defecate. It has a terrible thirst—it is as thirsty as a bear!—so the first thing it does is quench it. Then it begins to eat purgative herbs, mainly looking for spicy hellebore, a strongly purgative and circulation-accelerating plant. The natural plug of excrement that has closed off the lower intestine over the winter is excreted, and then the proverbial hunger—“hungry as a bear”—comes into play.
Brooklime, watercress, wild onions, chickweed, young nettles, sour dock, and many other edible spring plants that make up the bear’s first meals and reactivate its metabolism and circulation also fire up its glands and inhibit anaerobic fermentation and putrefactive agents in the intestines. They are the same herbs that our ancestors ate as blood-cleansing cures—usually also in the spring after a long winter without fresh greens.
Willow bark, willow buds, and meadowsweet shoots (Filipendula) that contain natural aspirin (salicylic acid) flush excess uric acid out of blood and tissue (for bears as well as for humans) and free the bear of the back pain that usually comes from lying for so long in the cold. Bears like to eat the young shoots of hogweed as much as traditional European farmers will make a soup of them as a stimulating and digestive spring meal. Bears also like young dandelions, a traditional addition to a spring salad that humans also enjoy. Dandelion increases gall secretion, is diuretic, clears out slag, and tones the intestines. Bears clear winter catarrh and phlegm out of their lungs by eating plantain and colt’s foot leaves. As one can see, in the bear’s apothecary we find the Celtic-Germanic “nine herbs” that people also traditionally ate during spring festivals and are still occasionally found in cleansing Maundy Thursday or Good Friday soups.1
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