Driving north from Füssen on Highway 16 toward Marktoberdorf, an oddity catches the eye. Beside the road sits a village chapel, terracotta roof and white painted facade angled off the main street. While the walls are plumb with the world, its onion-dome steeple leans away from the street.

At first the mind must work out whether it’s the walls or the steeple not right. A trick is played by the painted clock face and the corner street sign. The first aligns with the walls below, the second with the steeple above.

I think there must be a story behind that, so I go searching. The village is Steinbach, part of the municipality of Stötten am Auerberg. In a document listing local monuments, the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation labels the building at Hauptstrasse 9 as a “Catholic Chapel of Saints Magnus and Wendelin.” The following text, translated, describes the chapel’s construction:

“Hall building with gable roof, recessed choir with semicircular apse, hipped spire and gable turret protruding over console with octagonal bell story and onion dome, 1726 probably according to plans by Johann Georg Fischer, using parts of a previous building from 1658/60; with furnishings. Refurbished.”

Johann Georg Fischer (b. 1673, Oberdorf; d. 1747, Füssen) was a stonemason and builder. Many works in Füssen and throughout the region are attributed to him.

The chapel’s description makes no mention of the canted steeple. But now I am waylaid by the saints to whom the chapel is dedicated. St. Magnus is widely known in these parts as founder of St. Mang’s Abbey in Füssen and slayer of the Rosshaupten dragon. But who is this Wendelin?

I discovered that Wendelin is a legendary figure. By that, I mean that we know of him only through legends. The first written accounts of the saint’s life were recorded eight hundred years after his death. The earliest known source is the 15th-century Vita Sancti Wendelini, reputedly written by monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Tholey in Saarland, five hours drive northwest of here.

The most often cited source is Reverend Francis X. Weninger’s 1877 Lives of the Saints¹. I have compiled this account of Wendelin’s life from that and various other sources. This author confesses the sin of embellishment.

Wendel: wanderer, pilgrim (Old High German).
-in: a diminutive suffix.

The story is set in the sixth century. This is after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, before the Holy Roman Empire, during the time of the Franks before Charlemagne.

Wendelin was born into a royal house of Ireland or Scotland, depending on the legend. Scholarship suggests it was more likely Ireland, which the Romans had called Scotia. At the time, various kingdoms struggled against each other for domination of the island.

The young prince learned to read and to fight with a sword. Wendelin might have enjoyed all the luxuries afforded the royalty of sixth-century Ireland, but he was a pious youth. He studied scripture and always kept his prayers.

Upon coming of age, he put down the sword and lay aside his crown. He renounced all wealth and heritage and, dressed in simple traveler’s garb, ran away from home to make a pilgrimage to Rome.

He went through France, visiting all the holy sites in that country. In Rome, the young man received the Pope’s blessing and visited the apostles’ tombs. Pilgrimage complete, he traveled north from Rome and came to the Westrich district, in the Diocese of Trier, which today straddles the French-German border. Trier, sometimes called Trèves, is Germany’s oldest city.

Wendelin came to a village, which was named for Baso, the lord of the local manor house. Outside the village, on a low hill beside a small river, he built a crude hut from tree branches. He rested on a bed of leaves. In this simple dwelling, he withdrew into a hermetic life.

Now, the legend goes, Wendelin one day went into the village to beg for his bread. The lord, driving by in a carriage, saw the young man begging bread among the peasants and admonished him. “A strong young lad should work for his bread,” said Baso. “Go and guard my pigs while I go to town.”

Wendelin went to guard the pigs. All the sheep came to him. On Baso’s return, he discovered Wendelin, guarding the pigs amid a flock of sheep.

Over the bleating sheep, Baso shouted to Wendelin, “It seems, lad, you are made to be a shepherd. Lead the flock into the green pastures where the sheep may graze on fresh grass.”

Wendelin took up a crook and led the flock into the pastures and, so, became a shepherd. He led the sheep far across the countryside, where the sheep always grazed in fresh pastures. While the sheep grazed, Wendelin sat in meditation or studying a scripture book, which he always carried.

Each day, he went farther and farther into the hills, and each day he returned with the flock safely to the fold. The sheep were well fed. They fell never to injury nor to sickness. The ewes gave much milk, and the rams were healthy and vital. Lord Baso was pleased with the new shepherd.

One day, while riding horseback far out in the country, Baso came upon Wendelin and the flock of sheep. The lord admonished the shepherd. “You have brought the flock much too far. You will arrive at the fold long after nightfall, and the sheep will be weary.”

Baso was surprised when, in the afternoon, he trotted the horse through the manor gate and found Wendelin perched on a hillock above the fold. The sheep drank at the water trough.

Baso cried out, “It’s a miracle! You have brought the flock far over hill and dale and back to the fold in less time than my horse has carried me the same distance.”

Dismounting the horse, Baso approached Wendelin. He bowed his head before the young man. “You must leave off herding sheep, lad. The Lord our God must have greater plans for you.”

Baso offered him a great sum of money so that he might spend his days in prayer and meditation without begging for food. But Wendelin accepted only his due wages and returned to the hut on the hillside above the river.

Wendelin often took long walks, wandering through fields and woods and far into the hills, where he would meditate and read from the scripture book. When he encountered peasants in their homes or travelers on the road, he witnessed to them. He told them of the blessing of Christ, and so converted many pagans to the faith.

When their cattle were stricken with disease, peasants sought the hermit’s help, and he cured the animals. And when the people were sick, they came to him, and he cured them as well.

Other aspirants came to Wendelin. By his humble aspect and devout practice, Wendelin inspired these novices to lay aside temporal things and seek eternal rewards. There grew up around Wendelin a monastic community.

Then, a pestilence spread throughout the region. The folk of the village beseeched Wendelin to pray that the village be spared. Wendelin kept vigil. For twelve days and nights, he prayed and meditated without rest or sleep. In the twelfth night, he fell, exhausted, into the bed of leaves. Though the pestilence raged throughout the countryside, taking many lives, the village was spared.

In those days, the Bishop of Trier was Magnerich. Magnerich ordered the establishment of an abbey in the nearby town of Tholey. Having heard the story of the hermit who saved the village, he called Wendelin to become the abbot.

Wishing not to give up his hermetic life, Wendelin refused. But Baso came to him and said, “This is the greater plan the Lord our God has for you, lad. As once you were a herder of sheep, now you must be a herder of men.”

So Wendelin went to Tholey and became the abbey’s first abbot. He served as abbot for twenty years before he died. The monks built a tomb in the floor of the abbey church and, during a prayerful ceremony, placed his body within the tomb and covered it with a stone slab.

The next morning, the monks discovered Wendelin’s body atop the stone slab. Taking this as a sign, the monks placed the body in a mule cart and let the mule have its lead. The mule pulled the cart to the site of Wendelin’s old hut on the hillside above the river. There, the monks built another tomb, this one made of stones dragged from the river, and there they reinterred the body.

Peasants came often to the hillside tomb to pray for healing for themselves and for their loved ones and for their animals. Many of these prayers were answered. Word spread, and the faithful began to make pilgrimages to Wendelin’s tomb. After some years, a chapel was built over the tomb. A village grew up around the chapel, and after Wendelin was canonized, the village became known as Sankt Wendel.

Saint Wendelin (b. 554, Scotland; d. 617, Sankt Wendel) is reputedly the first abbot of Tholey Abbey in 597. Patron saint of country folk and herdsmen, Wendelin is venerated today in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The saint’s feast day is celebrated, depending on the regional liturgical calendar, either on October 16, 20, 21, or, as in the Diocese of Trier, on October 22. In art, he is depicted as a young man or a bearded man with a shepherd’s bag and staff. He often carries a book and feeds lambs. Crown and sword lay at his feet.

Two documentary films have been made about Wendelin, both in German and by Barbara Wackernagel-Jacobs for carpe diem Film & TV Produktion:

• Der Heilige Wendelin: Auf Den Spuren Eines Volksheilegen (Saint Wendelin: In the Footsteps of a Folk Saint). Directed by Barbara Wackernagel-Jacobs. Saarbrücken, Germany: carpe diem, 2010. Documentary, 42 minutes.
• Wendelin Weltweit: Auf den Spuren eines Heiligen (Wendelin Worldwide: In the Footsteps of a Saint). Directed by Barbara Wackernagel-Jacobs. Saarbrücken, Germany: carpe diem, 2017. Documentary, 72 minutes (11-min trailer).

1. Weninger, Rev. F. X. Lives of the Saints: Compiled from Authentic Sources; With a Practical Instruction on the Life of Each Saint for Every Day of the Year, Vol. II. New York: O’Shea. 1877. 479-481. ↩︎