Penitence Cross Kirchabüahl

Inconspicuous  and covered with moss, three very old stone crosses stand at the side of the road in Mittelberg. Their significance has been interpreted in different ways, surrounded as they are by an aura of the extraordinary. There are also penitence crosses in the neighboring Allgäu. They were put up in the 14th to 16th centuries by wrongdoers who had committed serious crimes – homicide or manslaughter. Not only punishment, but also penitence was exacted from the perpetrators of these crimes. Most often they were required to chisel penitence crosses out of stone slabs and put them up at the scene of the crimes.

This cross and two others were probably put up by a man who got into a heated dispute with his three brothers after a drinking bout in Bödmen. The first brother was killed at Sonnhalde in Bödmen. The penitence cross stands there at the edge of the road. The second brother died here on the Kirchabühl, and the third was killed at a wood shed near the present “Café Behringer.” The cross there was removed in 1935. On both sides of the penitence cross a “Züüge” – a stone witness of the crime – was put in the ground.

There is a letter of penitence from the year 1455, written in Trausdorf in Burgenland. Here an excerpt:  “I, the clergyman Gilig, the guilty one, do, with this letter, publicly admit that the heir Thoman Drescher and his relatives have convicted me, the clergyman Giligen from Gschies, on the accusations of the honorable and wise judges and aldermen, and condemned me to corporal punishment in jail for the murder of Peter the Drescher. For this deed I would have been condemned to death, but after jail and corporal punishments I was, firstly according to God’s will and later at the bidding of pious citizens, exempted from that. And so I was spared the death penalty under the following conditions: I should have a stone cross made and put up at the place where Drescher was murdered. In addition, I should do penance by going to the grave with 32 persons, each with a wax candle. After that I am to undertake a pilgrimage to Rome (…). And all of that must be carried out within the period of a year.”