About the Hospice du Grand Saint Bernard

I have just spent three nights at the Hospice du Grand Saint Bernard. St Bernard started providing refuge to travellers there in 1050, so in a sense it is the oldest mountain hut in the Alps, yet it is quite unlike the mountain huts described in my last post.

The Hospice is built on the Great St Bernard Pass at 2469m and at that altitude is snowbound from September to June. The pass links the Val d’Aosta in Italy to the Valais or Rhône Valley in Switzerland. It therefore lay on the most direct route from Rome to London. The Romans built a road over it and some of the columns marking the miles still survive, notably at Bourg St Pierre, the last settlement before ascending the pass on the Swiss side, some 24 Roman miles out from Martigny which was an important Roman town in the Rhône valley. One can only wonder whether the climate was more clement in those days making it possible and worth their while to build the road instead of going a much longer way round. The pass was dedicated to Jupiter or Jove and as such before being renamed after St Bernard was called the Montjoux pass in French. Many ancient ex-votos addressed in Latin to Jupiter for protection have been found along it.

The pass has always been dangerous, particularly avalanche-prone in certain key passages and subject to fog at the top on up to 200 days a year. Also in the Middle Ages it was a favourite haunt of brigands ready to rob and kill travellers. Apart from being a significant trade (and smuggling) route it was the route for pilgrims travelling from England to Rome, the Via Francigena. It was a long hard slog. From Bourg St Pierre it is 800m up and back down and 24 km in distance to the first settlement in Italy, Bourg St Rhémy. Travellers and pilgrims who were mainly on foot could also die of exhaustion and exposure.

Bernard de Menthon was born into a noble family by lake Annecy in Savoie but chose to enter the church and became the archdeacon at Aosta. He realized something had to be done to protect the travellers and so organized the building of the Hospice, that is a place providing hospitality, refuge, half way along the route, right at the top of the pass where the weather was worst and people were most tired. He also saw to the elimination of the brigands. In the iconography he is shown, for example in paintings in the large church attached to the Hospice, with one foot on a defeated prostrate monstrous man with horns whom he has set in chains.

The Hospice continued to be enlarged and consolidated over the centuries becoming a large and actually quite forbidding looking set of four storey high blocks built of extremely thick walls and set on either side of the road with a covered bridge connecting them.

As late as the 1930s there were still as many as 25 “”chanoines” or canons in permanent residence. They are not actually monks as they do not live in recluse but in permanent contact with the outside world. Anybody turning up would be given a free meal and a bed for the night. If word came in that some were in distress on the way up, collapsed, lost in the fog, hit by avalanche, they would go out in all weathers, assisted from the 18thC by the famous St Bernard dogs to look for them and fetch them in, whoever they were, no questions asked in a gesture of purest Christianity.

Basically it was the church engaged in a huge act of charity demonstrating faith through good works. And it still is.

In 1968 the Swiss and Italians completed a 6km tunnel down at 1900m right under the pass and Hospice. If you wanted to get from one side to the other during the nine month winter, there was strictly no need any more to brave the pass.

And yet the Hospice lives on. Those who go there now during the months when the road is closed to traffic go there not out of necessity but of desire to be in the high mountains to seek out nature and themselves in a special place. So too it was in my case.

Together with seven other French ski-tourers and a guide we stepped out of our minibus at the car park next to the tunnel entrance which marks the end of the road as far as the Hospice is concerned. From here on no motorized transport is allowed and you have to proceed on foot, that is using touring skis or snow shoes.

By the way the Hospice lays in all its winter supplies before the road closes in September and takes only one helicopter drop in March before the road reopens in June. They have to manage resourecs carefully and get visitors to take away their own rubbish. Miraculously, for a place at this altitude, they have a spring not far away which delivers a constant supply of delicious fresh water.

To begin with the ascent is leisurely following the summer road as far as a small stone shelter reached after several km. The way then follows the side of the torrent more steeply up the encouragingly named “Combe des Morts” (something like “Dead Man’s Gulch”) where over the centuries many have died victims to avalanche. Fortunately this section is marked by posts, for we soon found ourselves in the thickest of fogs with visibility down to less than 10m at one point. Thus we didn’t see the Hospice till we were right up against its walls. It had taken us two and a half hours to get there.

Once having stowed our skis and boots in the cellar we went back upstairs and along a vaulted corridor with stone flagged floor to the communal room still known as “le Poêle” (“the Stove”) as in former times it was the only heated room in the Hospice. Here we were greeted by one of the chanoines wearing a short white smock made of light fleece over a pair of jeans and with a simple wooden cross hanging from his neck. He offered us a most welcome bowl of hot tea and asked us how our ascent had gone and told us one or two things useful to first time visitors. Our dormitory was comfortable and a short walk from some hot showers and indoor loo: as mountain huts go, this was pretty luxurious.

After a good if not gastronomic dinner the chanoine informed us of some evening activities, there would be a slide-show about the Hospice and the museum would be open. They are proud of their almost thousand years of history and want visitors to learn about it.

We visited the museum where one of the star exhibits is Barry, a now stuffed St Bernard dog who in the 19thC saved 42 lives. The famous dogs can no longer be seen at the Hospice during winter, they are looked after by the Barry Foundation in Martigny. Since nowadays visitors deliberately ski up to the Hospice they tend to be eqipped with avalanche victim detection devices. These are known as ARVA in France, DVA in Switzerland and earlier as BarryVox which was the name given to the first model developed by the Swiss Army in the 50’s. If the chanoines have to go out looking for avalanche victims these days they use the modern electronic device. Nonetheless a French guide in residence is currently training a Collie to be a rescue dog.

The next day we were blessed with a clear blue sky day and climbed up and skied back down Mont Fauchon (2912m) in Italy.

Afterwards at 5.30 we attended afternoon mass, or eucharisty, celebrated not in the beautifully and elaborately decorated church but below it in the bare though heated crypt. This daily service is at the heart of life in the Hospice. The three resident chanoines and deaconess are joined also by visiting deacons and priests in the officiating and other lay visitors are invited to do the readings and provide musical accompaniment to the songs. The resulting shared event is informal while respecting the structure of mass. On the first afternoon I found the sermon beautifully preached by the Prior, José, and quite thought provoking.

Thus a group of people had withdrawn from the hurly burly of the modern world to make the effort of walking up to an isolated place of a timeless human dimension, close to the beauty and overwhelming force of Nature, to reflect together on the nature of human relationships, love and charity.

The example of the chanoines still honouring a century-old tradition of providing hospitality to those passing their way, whatever their background and belief, is inspiring, it is Christianity at its best.