Gnashing his teeth, but willing, a half-naked devil helps a bishop build a church. Holding a trowel in his right hand, the saint allows the crow-footed creature to hand him pieces of stone, while a demonic comrade eagerly wheels in mortar (figures 5.1a, 5.1b). The painted wooden relief, which dates from the first quarter of the sixteenth century, is one of the earliest known depictions of a legend according to which the church on Lake Wolfgang was erected with the assistance of the devil.1 In a roughly contemporary panel picture from the Stiftsgalerie St. Lambrecht, the saintly Bishop no longer soils his own hands, and instead gestures with his white gloves, imparting instructions that are carried out by eager little devils equipped with trowels, hammers, plumb lines, and compasses (figure 5.2). As a reward for his assistance, the devil demands the soul of the first pilgrim to enter the church, but after the saint says a prayer, God sends a wolf into the church as the first visitor, and it furiously bites the cheated assistant.
Master of the Legend of St. Wolfgang, The Building of the Church of St. Wolfgang with the Help of the Devil, 1515/1520, wood, Linz, Schlossmuseum (originally in the Monastery of St. Florian) OÖ Landes-Kultur GmbH, Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte bis 1918, inv.-no. S11
IMAGE: OÖ LANDES-KULTUR GMBH
Master of the Legend of St. Wolfgang, Wolf Disguised as a Pilgrim, 1515/1520 (see 5.1a).
Anonymous, The Building of the Church of St. Wolfgang, 1510–1520, tempera on wood, St. Lambrecht, Stiftsgalerie
IMAGE: INSTITUT FÜR REALIENKUNDE, UNIVERSITÄT SALZBURG
As Rudolf Zinnhobler has shown, the active participation by the devil in church building was a relatively late addition to the Legend of Saint Wolfgang. The earliest written document, which dates from 1369, claims that the saint built the church propriis manibus; accordingly, Michael Pacher’s famous St. Wolfgang Altarpiece of 1471/81 shows him alone with an assistant.2 Johannes Wyssenburger’s woodcut of 1515 contains an allusion to the devil’s demand for the first pilgrim, but not his participation in the building.3 Only in Johann Christoph Wasner’s vita of 1599 does the devil offer his services as a helper and supplier of building materials – a collaboration that evidently struck the author as so unusual he felt himself obliged to supply an explanation: ‘In fact, the saints have to deal with devils, and must compel them to perform labor that
Spinello Aretino, Scenes from the Life of St. Benedict: The Devil Weighing Down a Stone, c.1387/88, fresco, San Miniato al Monte
IMAGE: JOACHIM POESCHKE, WANDMALEREI DER GIOTTOZEIT IN ITALIEN. 1280–1400, MUNICH 2003, PL. 240
Spinello Aretino, Scenes from the Life of St. Benedict: The Devil Slays a Monk by Collapsing a Wall, c.1387/88, fresco, San Miniato al Monte
PHOTO: JASMIN MERSMANN
The legends of master builders that emerged in the sixteenth century belong to a tradition, stretching all the way back to late antiquity, of tales of people who became engaged with the devil in the hope of acquiring certain skills, worldly treasures, power, or love. A search for this motif in artist’s biographies, however, tends to lead to disappointment. Encounters by artists with the devil are generally depicted as disturbing rather than productive: Hugo van der Goes, for example, who was plagued by terrifying visions, ceased painting altogether due to his mental derangement.7 Spinello Aretino, confronted by the devil for the offense of portraying him with extreme ugliness, is frightened to death by a demonic dream apparition.8 After he has made a pact with the devil, only an exorcism saves the Bavarian painter Christoph Haizmann.9 Franz Xaver Messerschmidt found himself pursued by the demonic ‘spirit of proportion’, which he kept at bay only by means of the grimaces he then translated into images.10 Only Benvenuto Cellini – who styles himself in his autobiography as an exceptional character, and who continually comes into contact with the elements of fire and with the demonic – succeeds in channeling this ‘diabolical furor’ in order to create a masterwork when casting his Perseus. In the end, however, the success of the creation of the bronze statue, which seems to surpass human powers and nearly costs the sculptor his life, seems nonetheless to be indebted to divine favor.11
In the legends, the devil appears as a welcome ally because – despite his inability to work miracles – he is able to accomplish extraordinary feats within the laws of nature, and (as a disembodied spirit) to travel through both space and time. At the same time, however, the figure of the devil is interpretable as an embodiment of the unease that was associated with the construction of Babylonian buildings, in particular towers and bridges. As a liminal creature, a trickster, and a border crosser, the devil appears with particular frequency as a builder of bridges – not solely, as in John Milton, between Earth and Heaven,15 but also between territories that have been separated by God, by nature, or by terrestrial rulers: countless bridges have been named after him, with at least fifty ‘devil’s bridges’ located in France, Spain, Italy, England, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.16
In the research to date, no systematic attempt has been made to generate a reliable chronology of the emergence of the first texts documenting legends of master builders in the modern era.17 The present study cannot fulfil this
Even very early on, popular culture sought to create a distance from the fearful figure of the devil, rendering him a ludicrous figure or affirming human superiority within the delicate synagonism of mortal and demon: in most legends, the devil is outwitted or cheated.19 Many master builders took advantage of a loophole in their contracts by sending an animal, instead of a human being, across the threshold as the first to enter the building (St. Wolfgang, Regensburg, Frankfurt, Schöllenen Gorge), or by shortening the time period stipulated for the completion of the building, for instance by having a rooster crow early (Roter Haubarg near Husum).20
Most of the legends do not deplore these tricky collaborations with demonic forces, and instead celebrate the ingenuity of the master builders for their ability to turn antagonistic forces toward their own – and their community’s – advantage. Beginning in the Middle Ages, the documents not only assert the communis utilitas of bridges, which – as in the case of the bridge over the Danube River in Vienna, built in 1439 – ‘prove greatly beneficial and useful to lands and to people, to rich and poor alike’, but also deem their construction and maintenance as pium opus.21 Not only did bridges qualify as legal entities with their own official seals and secular revenues, but were also the recipient of pious donations, and even indulgences.22
1 Regensburg
The Stone Bridge (Pons lapideus), erected between 1136 and 1145 in the form of 16 segment arches across two arms of the Danube River near Regensburg, linking the free imperial city with the Bavarian dukedom, was adorned with numerous reliefs (figure 5.5).23 Depicted alongside the ‘Brückenmännlein’ (little bridge man), which has been dated to 1446, a small nude male figure that emblematizes civil liberties and emancipation from the guardianship of the bishop,24 and a variety of probably apotropaic emblems (a basilisk and a weasel as the only animal capable of withstanding its deadly gaze), is a cockfight (figures 5.6–5.8).25 In 1664, Matthäus Merian interpreted the reliefs, along with the ‘Bruckmanndl,’ as references to the legendary rivalry between the master builders of the cathedral and the bridge respectively, behind which, presumably, was a conflict between bishop and municipality: ‘The quarreling and rancor between the builders of the tower and the bridge was suggested not just by the little man [who looks toward the cathedral], but also by the relief of a cockfight that can be seen on the bridge’.26 Jakob Sturm, who arrived in
Stone Bridge (Steinerne Brücke), Regensburg, in: Jacob Leupold, Theatrum pontificale, Oder Schau-Platz der Brücken und Brücken-Baues, Leipzig 1726, pl. XXVII, Zurich, Zentralbibliothek
IMAGE: JACOB LEUPOLD
Bruckmandl, 1854, limestone, copy of a sculpture from c.1446, destroyed in 1579
IMAGE: STADT REGENSBURG, BILDDOKUMENTATION
Weasel or lizard, stone relief on the flank of the Stone Bridge, Regensburg, chalk lithograph, 1835, in: Karl Bauer: Regensburg. Kunst-, Kultur- und Alltagsgeschichte, Regensburg 1997, p. 462
IMAGE: KARL BAUER
Cockfight, 1580, stone relief on the flank of the Stone Bridge, Regensburg
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Significantly, however, neither Merian nor Sturm mention the collaboration of the devil. The motif emerges in Regensburg (and hence perhaps not accidentally in Saint Wolfgang’s home diocese) only in Johann Georg Keyssler’s travel report of 1741.28 Among the trademarks, Keyssler mentions ‘stone effigies on the parapets of the bridge of a dog without a head and two roosters received by the devil. The master bridge builder cunningly chased these animals across the bridge, making them the first to traverse it, the Evil One having assisted with the construction work in the hope of procuring a human being, having stipulated that the first [living being] to cross the bridge would belong to him’.29
Found here are all of the topical motifs: the cunning master builder enlists the services of the devil, who in a countermove demands the first or the first three living beings that step onto the bridge. But in Regensburg too, the devil is deprived of his remuneration when the master builder sends across the bridge the animals whose likenesses are now preserved in the reliefs.30
In Lübeck, the situation is similar: here as well, the civic builders of St. Mary’s Church (Marienkirche) are supposed to have enlisted the powers of the devil in their rivalry with the cathedral chapter, persuading him that together, they would build an inn where he could capture human souls. Shortly before the completion of the church, when the devil realizes he has been deceived, he hurls a stone against the house of God, which just misses the
[O]n the advice and with the consent of our dear Bishop Kuno of Regensburg, and of Duke Otto of Bavaria and other princes and noblemen of our court, as well as based on our own carefully considered decision, and at the request of the citizens of Regensburg and the bridge master, we establish and grant the aforementioned bridge, Herbord, comprehensive freedom, such that no measures for the compulsory collection of revenues shall be enforced on anyone crossing the bridge, apart from voluntary contributions willingly given for its maintenance and improvement.36
Accordingly, the bridge was a neutral location protected by a higher authority, and was consequently an expression of civic emancipation in relation to both duke and bishop.37 The bridge master was always a councilman, and the bridge, with its figures of kings and lions, was a ‘constitutional program of king and city, now set in stone’, and hence a ‘monument to the rights of a self-constituted citizenship’.38
In Regensburg, then, the devil made an appearance precisely at a boundary or transitional zone that had been a disputed location for centuries. Another motive for the emergence of the legend, however, must have been the imposing structure itself, which evidently struck travelers in the early modern era as far too massive to have been erected by medieval craftsmen.39 In 1515, significantly, it is not the devil who is mentioned to an Italian curate as the builder of the bridge, and instead the Emperor Hadrian.40 In the sixteenth century,
If the legends about the devil had actually been as old as modern histories of Regensburg attempt to persuade us, Hans Sachs would hardly have missed an opportunity to transmit them in 1569.42 Nor, as late as the 1590s, does the Bohemian nobleman Friedrich von Dohna seem to be familiar with the rivalry between master builders, nor of the participation of the devil. Becoming established instead was a kind of paragone between cities according to which ‘in German lands, the bridge in Prague is the longest, the one in Dresden the most beautiful, and the one in Regensburg the most stable’.43 Nor, as mentioned above, do we find references to satanic collaboration in the works of seventeenth century authors. On the contrary: in 1663, Jakob Sturm admired not just the bridge’s construction, but also its remarkably brief building schedule, which he however attributed not to supernatural forces and instead to human ingenuity.44 The human mastery of nature is celebrated in a particularly euphoric tone in Jacob Leupold’s Theatrum pontificale of 1726, according to which the Stone Bridge once again demonstrated ‘that no river is too broad, too deep, too rapid or turbulent to prevent human reason from conquering it with pillars and bays’.45
The master builder in charge of the bridge was said to have been a former apprentice of another master builder, responsible for building the cathedral, with its tower. They competed with one another to see which of the two could complete his work first. In order to prevail in this contest, the former apprentice made a pact with the devil, promising him that the first three souls to cross the bridge after its completion would be
his. When the cathedral building master saw that his former apprentice had finished before him, he flung himself from the tower of the church. In order to compensate the devil for services rendered, however, the first building master drove a rooster, then a dog, and finally a goat across the bridge before any other soul could cross it. The devil tore the first two creatures to pieces on the spot. When the goat arrived, he became so enraged at failing to acquire any human souls that he grabbed the poor animal in his claws and struck the bridge with it with such force that a cavity was formed. To this very day, and as fabulous as this tale might seem, you can nonetheless still see the hole created in the bridge by the devil.47
Schmidlin may have overheard talk about a cathedral building master who flung himself from the tower on a journey to Vienna. There, the presence of the supposedly demolished (but in fact never-completed) northern tower of St. Stephen’s Cathedral was explained by a legend about the master builder Hans Puchsbaum, to whom the devil provided assistance under the condition that Puchsbaum never utter any holy name on the building site. Finally, when Puchsbaum stood before his completed tower and called out to the Virgin Mary, he is said to have been plunged into the depths together with his handiwork.48
2 Schöllenen Gorge
And because this place is enclosed all around so closely by high, smooth cliffs, and the water rushes and splashes so, the country people refer to [the gorge] as the Inferno, or Hell, and the bridge El Ponto Dilferno, Hell Bridge or Devil’s Bridge. There is no one so manly that when he must cross this high, narrow bridge … he is not terrified and filled with fear, particularly since there are no railings or sides on it.55
The legend finally becomes tangible in 1625 in a report by a Polish traveler who again attributes the pact with the devil to a saint, namely St. Gotthard.56 The legend became public mainly through the version supplied by Johann Jakob Scheuchzer in 1708: when the builders from Uri despaired, confronted with the ‘depth of the tall cliffs and the danger of falling into the Reuß [River] that flowed and foamed below’, the devil offered his assistance in order to ‘accomplish something that would be nearly impossible for them, or at least highly dangerous’ – under the condition that he [the devil] would receive ‘the first to cross the bridge’.57 Upon completing the structure, however, the devil is doubly cheated. In place of a human being, the cunning country folk persuade a dog across the bridge; when the furious devil hauls a stone to the bridge in order to destroy it, a ‘holy man’ steps into his path.58 The presence of precisely
Johann Melchior Füssli, Devil’s Bridge, in J. J. Scheuchzer, Nova Helvetiae Tabula Geographica, 1712, colored engraving
PUBLIC DOMAIN
3 Building Sacrifices
The conquest of nature through ‘human ingenuity’ has been a central topos in descriptions of bridges since the early modern era. In many respects, however, the overcoming of natural forces and gravity has always been precarious. Completed through enormous effort, bridges were threatened by storm surges and ice drifts, overloading or military aggression.60 In addition, there were remnants of an ancient notion according to which the bridging of a river represented not just a logistical challenge, but also an impious transgression. Rivers were regarded as sacred boundaries that were watched over by divinities, and their crossing seen as sacrilegious.61 The construction of a bridge – and often its use as well – therefore required sacrifices in order to appease the genius
René Girard interpreted sacrifices in the context of his mimetic theory as a controlled repetition of the slaying of a scapegoat, which is to say the culture-constituting murder that transforms the violence of all against all into a collective excess against an isolated individual.65 Child sacrifice was later supplanted by animal sacrifice, and finally by models, shadows, or the sacrifice of objects, and supplemented by apotropaic figures or plants.66 Material evidence of this practice is however rare. Researchers have warned against identifying every human corpse found buried beneath a wall or threshold as a building sacrifice, since these might instead have been penal immurements or other forms of burial.67 Alongside archaeological finds, however, textual sources also testify to the perpetuation of sacrificial practices in the early modern era.68 When inspecting a dike in 1615, for example, Duke Anton Günther of Oldenburg is said to have learned of an attempt by his workers to immure a child in its foundations.69
4 Synagonism
Collaboration with the devil is certainly a perilous form of synagonism. For only apparently do master builders and devil pursue a shared goal; only apparently do they struggle together against natural forces, competitors, or time; in truth, they have different motives: the builders strive toward the humanly impossible; the devil takes advantage of human competitiveness in order to prey on souls. Together, however, they – or the building masters exploiting natural forces – succeed in doing what humans alone can hardly do. The residue of uneasiness concerning human hubris, the presumptuous transgression of divine or natural limits, may be partially responsible for the emergence of legends about the devil, which belong to the tradition of building sacrifices that existed right up into the modern age.
In conclusion, the legends provide a narrative form for highly diverse situations of conflict or fruiful competition: rivalry with other master builders, between political actors (emperor/bishop/citizenry), or with (divine) nature. For the most part, competition is regarded as productive, as a factor that enhances performance or hastens the work process; at the same time, however, it is regarded with a certain ambivalence. From the perspective of a successful building project, competition appears as synagonism, as the fruitful interdependency of conflicting forces.
But such a materialist point of view, which regards the legends as cover stories for underlying conflicts, should not lead to the neglect of the world
It is remarkable that the devil consistently gets a raw deal in the context of these collaborations. Unlike the deterrent example of Doctor Faustus, the legends of the building masters – which supplanted narratives about collaborations between saints and the devil – evidently served less as warnings against pacts with the devil or worldly agon than as celebrations of human ingenuity and the fruitfulness of competitive behavior. According to Goethe in the first part of his Faust, Mephistopheles is lulled into believing that he has won the wager made in the prologue; in the second part of the tragedy, however, he meets with failure precisely through the success of a synagonistic building enterprise: Faust is saved despite his disastrous dike project, realized with Mephistopheles’s assistance.
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- Zinnhobler 1976↑
R. Zinnhobler, ‘Die Aberseelegende und ihre Entstehung’, in: M. Mohr (ed.), Der heilige Wolfgang in Geschichte, Kunst und Kult, cat. Schloß zu St. Wolfgang, Linz 1976.
See Zinnhobler 1976, 57–59 and 114–115, no. 61. Around 1854, the romantic painter Moritz von Schwind transformed the legend into an allegory of the cunning overcoming of adversity in the Legend of the Bishop and the Devil (oil on wood, Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Schack Collection).
See Koller 1998, 32, pls. 10 and 16.
See Zinnhobler 1976, 58.
Wasner 1599, fol. 53: ‘Dann es mögen die heyligen Leuth wol etwas mit den Teuflen schaffen, und sie zu verrichtung etlicher Geschäfft, so zu der Ehr Gottes unnd anzaigung deß Verdiensts seiner Heyligen, ihme dem Teufel aber zu Spott und Schanden geraichen, zwingen’.
See Gregory 1979, book II.9, 170 and II.11, 172; see Voragine 2014, part 1, 661, no. 49.
See Poeschke 2003, 392–403 and Weppelmann 2003, 180–181, no. 33. The episode is already described in a manuscript by Desiderius of Montecassino from the end of the eleventh century (Vat.lat. 1202, fol. 40A) and later also in Luca Signorelli’s Benedict cycle in the Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore (see Oberer 2008, 205–206, no. 24).
See Dolev 1999, 125–137.
See Vasari 1966–1987, vol. 2, 288; see also Fehrenbach 2005, 1–40, esp. 21.
See Haizmann 2017 and the forthcoming monograph by the author of this article.
See Gampp 2008.
See Cellini 1996, 673: ‘quel diabolico furore’. An essential source for the link between demonology and art is Cole 2002.
See Holmes 2004; Lucas Valdès, Angel Painting the Portrait of St. Francis of Paola, 1710, oil on canvas, Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla.
See Kris & Kurz 1979, 58. Another source might be the pagan legends of giant builders who were later "diabolized". The Edda tells the story of a giant who, after constructing the castle of Asgard, is deceived by the gods (see Röhrich 1970, 29).
Warnke 1976, 154. When it came to the construction of large-scale projects, the new ‘level of demand’, which exceeded the resources of the individual, made collaboration indispensable. In particular cathedral building was ‘a field of social action … within which a variety of in part antagonistic social forces found a modus vivendi for working together constructively to reach a predetermined goal’. (see ibidem, 151–153). In particular, the speed with which such buildings were completed (see ibidem, 23–24) is a topos that is also invoked with an eye toward satanic collaboration. On Martin Warnke and the concept of “synagonism”, see Yannis Hadjinicolaou’s contribution in this volume.
In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan appears – in a travesty of the pope as Pontifex Maximus – as a bridge-builder (‘new wondrous pontifice’; 10.348). He petrifies chaos, thereby erecting a bridge between hell and earth (10.294, 10.312f.).
In contrast, I am aware of only one bridge said to be constructed with the assistance of angels: the Pont d’Avignon above an arm of the Rhône River, known mainly because of its ruinous condition. According to legend, a shepherd youth, St. Bénézet, is commanded by a celestial voice to build a bridge and granted superhuman strength, allowing him to lay the heavy cornerstone (see Walter 2006, 65–76).
The Handwörterbuch des Deutschen Aberglaubens for example, presents examples without information on dates of origin (see Bächtold-Stäubli 1927, cols. 1659–1665). The same is true of the so-called Aarne-Thompson-Index (see Aarne & Thompson 1961, 275 and 372 (type 810A and 1191), as well as for collections of legends and monographs on individual buildings. An exception is Gustav Gugitz, who includes an attempt at a chronology in his collection of Viennese legends; the volume includes the pact with the devil by the cathedral architect (see Gugitz 1952, 218–219).
Frank Knight already observed that the notion that the devil not only demands a victim, but also appears himself as a master builder, emerges relatively late as part of these legends (see Knight 1910, 851).
See Wünsche 1905, chap. 2.
The problem of animal souls is passed over with vague formulations such as “the first one alive” (Grimm & Grimm 1816, 437) or “the first to cross the bridge” (Scheuchzer 1708, 44). Sacrificed are cats (Pont del Diable, Catalonia; Pont du Diable in Céret/Pyrenees), dogs (Schöllenen Gorge, Devil’s Bridge in Ceredigion (Wales), Kirkby Lonsdale (England)), rabbits (Düvelsbrück on the Elbe near Hamburg), swine (Ponte del Diavolo on the Via Francigena near Lucca), and roosters (Regensburg; Bamberg; Frankfurt, Sachsenhausen).
Maschke 1977, esp. 271–272 and 282.
See ibidem, 271 and 280–285; Becker 1869.
See Dirmeier 2005.
The figure was restored in 1579 and moved in 1810; in 1826, the fragment was transferred to the museum; a modified replica was installed in 1854. Today, the nude figure, which shades its eyes from the sun, is generally interpreted as a “Südweiser” (a figure that points south) (see Bauer 1997, 458–461). On the pun in the inscription, see Beranek 1961. H.-E. Paulus still refers to the figure as an emblem of the ‘rivalry between the master builders of the cathedral and the bridge’, as well as an allusion to the historical ‘emancipation of the city from the bishop’ (Paulus 1996, 51).
See Bauer 1997, 462–463 and Volkert 2000, 1103.
Merian 1644, 46: ‘Es ist beyder Werckmeister nämlich deß Thumbs vnd der Brücken, Zanck und Haß, nicht allein durch solches [zum Dom schauende] Männlein, sondern auch durch den Hanenkampff, der auff einen Stein gehawen, unnd auff dieser Brück zu sehen, angedeutet worden’.
Sturm [1663?] 1875, 53: ‘… als ob er fragen wolt: Wenn er gebaut soll sejn?’.
Keyssler 1741, 1235–1236.
Ibidem: ‘… auf dem Geländer der Brücke die steinernen Bilder eines Hundes ohne Kopf und zweer Hahnen, die dem Teufel zu Theil worden, als der Meister der Brücke solche aus List zuerst darüber gejagt, nachdem der böse Feind, in der Hoffnung eine menschliche Creatur zu bekommen, seine Hülfe zur Aufführung des Werckes mit diesem Bedinge geleistet hatte, daß das erste, so über gedachte Brücke paßiren würde, ihm zugehören solte’. In 1785, when J. Diehlhelm reports on the ‘fairy tales and fables’ that surround the reliefs, he hastens to add: ‘Only the year 1580, said above the roosters, is inconsistent with the date of the bridge’s construction’. (Dielheim 1785, 243–244). Moreover, the cathedral and the bridge were built at different times.
Evidently, the legend migrated from Regensburg to Bamberg, where a narrative emerged of a competition between the cathedral building master and his journeyman (see Kuhn 1859, no. 418; see also Grimm 4th ed., 1875, 972).
Theodor Storm incorporated the legend of the building of St. Mary’s Church in Lübeck into a ballad: ‘Die Maurer und der Teufel,/Die haben zusammen gebaut;/Doch hat ihn bei der Arbeit/Kein menschlich Aug geschaut./Drum, wie sich die Kellen rührten,/Es mochte keiner verstehn,/Daß in so kurzen Tagen/So großes Werk geschehn…’ (‘The mason and the devil,/they worked together as builders;/But no human actually saw them/While they were at work./And how the trowels stirred themselves,/No one could understand it,/And that in so few days/Such a great edifice could rise …’) (Storm 1967, 981–983, cited on 981).
R. Zelger traces the motif of the flung stone back to the Roman legal custom of registering objections to a new building by throwing a stone (see Zelger 1996, 157).
The “Teufelsstein” (Devil’s Stone) near Sennewitz has five holes, as though from five fingers, not unlike a stone in the vicinity of Kühnsmühle near Schleitz (see Größler 1880, 257, no. 307 and Eifel 1871, 7, no. 13). According to legend, the devil assisted with the construction of the Frauenkirche in Munich under the condition that it should have no windows. But the master builder outwitted him – from the entrance, the structure did indeed appear windowless. In reaction, the devil is said to have stamped in a rage, leaving behind the so-called “Teufelstritt” (ill. in Pfister 2017, 7). Other footprints from the devil are preserved in St. Marien in Oythe, in Mariä Empfängnis in Zulling, and in St. Cyrpian or Cornelius in Ganderkesee near Bremen, among others. The grooves might derive from the practice of chipping off stone for use in folk medicine (see Jütte 2023, 308–309).
See Aarne & Thompson 1961, 260 and 372 (type 756B and 1191). See Garry & El-Shamy 2005, 309 and Uther 2004, 69.
See Schmid 1995.
Cited from Dünninger 1996, 10.
See Paulus 1996, 51.
Ibidem, 51 and 52.
Something similar is true for the Roman Limes, which was referred to in many places as the “devil’s wall”, according to Johann Alexander Döderlein. He comments: “Zu bewundern … ist fürwahr die Einfalt nicht wenig vernüfftiger Menschen, daß sie, wo ihnen etwas vorkommet, welches die menschliche Kräfften zu übersteigen scheinet, so gleich auff Satanische Wecke fallen.” (Remarkable here is the naiveté of certain sensible people who, confronted by something that seems to surpass human powers, immediately have recourse to satanic explanations) (Döderlein 1731, 31). Characteristic of Döderlein’s intermediate position between superstitious beliefs and enlightenment values is that he seems to regard as entirely plausible reports about wild hunts or horses shying at the Limes, while at the same time declining to accept these reports as certifying satanic authorship (ibidem 35).
Bartolini 1515, unpaginated; also in Althamer 1536, 37. As late as 1676, Johann Beer still mentions the Emperor Tiberius as the builder (reprinted in Wurster 1978, 243).
See Aventinus 1884, 323.
See Keller & Goetze 1895, 326.
Dohna, handwritten travel report, cited from Dünninger 1996, 13.
Sturm [1663?] 1875, 53: ‘Was hat nicht Wiz und Kunst der Menschen aufgebracht? was noch unmöglich wird verwundernde geacht?’.
Leupold 1726, 2: ‘daß kein Strohm zu breit, zu tieff, zu schnell und ungestüm, den der menschliche Verstand mit Pfeilern u. Jochen nicht bezwungen … hätte’.
See Schmidlin 1941, 120: ‘wunderb[ar] artiges Histörgen’. Döderlein also interprets this competition as rivalry between a master and a disciple (see Döderlein 1731, 32).
Schmidlin 1941, 120–121: ‘Der Baumeister, so die Brücke baute, solle vorhin ein Lehrling des anderen Baumeisters, der die Domkirche mit dem Thurm baute, gewesen seyn. Sie eiferten miteinander, welcher von beeden mit sr. Arbeit zuerst fertig werden würde. Der gewesene Lehrling schloß, um den Vorzug zu erhalten, einen Bund mit dem Teufel mit dem Verspruch, daß der Teufel die 3 ersten Seelen, welche über die Brücke, wann sie fertig wäre, gehen würden, haben sollte. Als der andere Baumeister an der Domkirche sahe, daß sein ehemaliger Lehrling vor ihm fertig würde, so stürtzte er sich von dem Thurm der Kirche herunter. Um aber den Teufel für seine geleisteten Dienste zu befriedigen, so trieb der erste Baumeister ehe eine andere Seele über die Brücke ging, zuerst einen Hahn, hernach einen Hund und zuletzt einen Bock hinüber. Die beiden ersten zerriß der Teufel auf der Stelle. Als der Bock kam, so ward er so böse, daß er gar keine Menschen-Seele bekommen sollte, daß er denselben zwischen seine Klauen nahm und dergestalt auf die Brücke stieß, daß die Brücke ein Loch davon bekam. So fabelhaft diese Erzählung aussieht, so zeigt man doch auf der Brücke noch heutigen Tages das Loch, das der Teufel gemacht haben solle.’
See for example Vogl 1845, 69–74. In reality, work on the northern tower designed by Hans Puchsbaum commenced only in 1466/1467, 13 years after his death (see Schedl 2018, 124). Circulating through eighteenth-century Vienna alongside the legend of the pact with the devil was a tale about master-disciple conflict which Friedrich Tilmez attempted to rationalize in 1722 by tracing it back to the master builder’s name (see Tilmez 1722, 93). E. Koller-Glück explained the legend of the devil with reference to Puchsbaum’s performance, seen retrospectively as “superhuman,” and the master-disciple variant with reference to the historical importance of artistic envy. She does not, however, exclude the possibility of a real fall from the scaffolding by a master builder (see Koller-Glück 2009, 53–58). St. Stephen’s Cathedral is one of the few instances for which an alternative legend tells of the collaboration of an angel or ‘beautiful journeyman’ (see ibidem, 55).
Schmidlin 1941, 121: ‘durch eine Fern-Röhre [!] gegen den Thurm der Domkirche … wie sich der Baumeister davon herabstürzt’.
See Brunner 2008, 354; Conzett 2016.
See Gisler-Pfrunder 2005. Diverse variants of the legends are recorded in: Lütolf 1865, 178–181.
See Havers 1946, esp. 109–110; Hegedüs 1958, esp. 89–90.
In view of its designation, widely diffused until the late sixteenth century, as ‘Stiebende Brück’, R. Laur-Belart is convinced ‘that the name Devil’s Bridge is literary in character, and was given to the bridge by savants and then [around the turn of the seventeenth century] penetrated the common people, giving rise to the widespread legend of the devil as a master builder, which was then localized here’. (Laur-Belart 1924, 165).
Hug & Weibel 1988, col. 642; Simmler 1574, fol. 102r.
Ryff 1600, fol. 34v; cited from Bruckner 1937, 336–337: ‘Und diewyl dann dis Ort eng und rings herumb mit hochen glatten Felsen umbringet und die Wasser also rouschen und stieben, so haben die Landleut Infernno, die Hell, und die Brücken El Ponto Dilferno, die Hellbrucken oder des Teuffelsbrucken, gênent. Keiner ist so manlich, ders nie gesechen, wan er so ilents unversechens umb dz Eck des Felsens darzuo kompt und über dise hoche, schmale Brücken muoss, der nit erschrecke und sich dorab nit etwas entsetze, sonderlich diewyl keine Länen oder Nebenwend doran sind …’.
Pac 1879, 431: ‘Wir ritten über eine Brücke, welche auf Befehl jenes Heiligen, wie die Sage überliefert, der Teufel selbst, vertragsmässig zu bauen gezwungen wurde’. (‘We rode across a bridge that, according to legend, had been constructed by the devil himself, compelled by a saint, and in accordance with contract’.)
Scheuchzer 1708, 44: ‘[zur] Bewerkstelligung dessen, so ihnen sonst fast unmöglich, wenigstens höchst gefährlich seye’. Johann Melchior Füssli’s dramatic accompanying engraving of the “Pons Diaboli” is also found in Leupold 1726, pl. XXV (see 96, § 193) and Schramm 1735, pl. 7.
Scheuchzer 1708, 45. In a later passage, he offers an explanation of the name that is based on sensory experience: ‘Da indessen die Reisenden auf schmalen, oft in Felsen ausgehauenen Wegen mit Forcht und Schreken von der Schöllinen ab- und in die Tieffe sehen, und hören die aneinander und an die Felsen anschlagenden, in einem hohen Wasser Staub sich auflösenden Wellen’. (‘Travelers, often walking on narrow paths, many hewn directly into the cliff, gaze down with fear and terror from the Schöllinen and into the depths, and hear the waves crashing against one another on the rocks, sending their spray high into the air’.) (ibidem, 94).
Sulzer 1747, 54. In 1763, Johann Gerhard Reinhard Andreae, who had also measured the bridge, remarked: ‘Das bekante Märchen von des Teufels wunderbarer Erbauung dieser Brükke, dessen Scheuchzer erwähnet, erzählet here niemand mehr. Eine abermalige Probe von der überall schwindenden Kraft des Aberglaubens und der dagegen mehr und mehr sich ausbreitenden Herrschaft der Vernunft …’ (‘No one here continues to tell the familiar fairytale, mentioned by Scheuchzer, of the devil’s miraculous construction of this bridge. Another example of the universally dwindling power of superstition, and the increasing dissemination, in opposition to it, of the rule of reason.’) (Andreae 1776, 127).
In 1784, the Stone Bridge too nearly fell victim to a dramatic ice drift that was captured in an engraving by Johann Mayr (GNM Nuremberg, inv. no. HB19810).
See Cassani 2014, 34–38.
See Daxelmüller 1983, cols. 1669–1670; Grimm 4th ed., 1875, 956–957; Klusemann 1919; Brewster 1971, 74; Durkheim 1991, 210–211; Burkert 1972, 49.
See Hesiod, Works and Days, verse 737. Xerxes sacrifices white horses to the River Strymon (see Herodotus, Histories, VII.114). Bulls and horses were sacrifice as well to the river god Skamandros (see Homer, Iliad, V.223). Even Caesar is said to have sacrificed horses before crossing the Rubicon (see Suetonius, The Life of Julius Caesar, verse 81). See Reimbold 1972, 55–78, 60.
See Knight 1910, 848. The ‘building sacrifice’ becomes a topos in Baroque panegyrics. Carl Christian Schramm refers to his text as a ‘monument sacrifice’, and praises the Great Elector as the vanquisher of Neptune (see Schramm 1735, Widmung und Zuschrift, unpaginated).
See Girard 2005, 8 and 101–104. See Palaver 2nd ed. 2004, 229. On building sacrifices, see also Kris & Kurz 1979, 84–85.
Paul Sartori describes various forms of sacrificial substitution, but also warns against a premature assumptions concerning original human sacrifices (Sartori 1898, esp. 31 and 47–55; see Brewster 1971, 73).
Freckmann 2013, 76.
The skeleton of a child was discovered underneath the bridge gate leading to Bremen, for example (ibidem 15 and 36); construction workers in Vienna discovered a mummified cat that is preserved today in the Wien Museum. Preserved in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich is a child’s boot from St. Sebaldus in Nuremberg, which was probably walled in during the vertical extension of the southern tower in 1483 (inv. no. I 7 273).
See Baring-Gould 1892, 15. A late echo of this practice is found in Theodor Storm’s 1888 novella Der Schimmelreiter, in which an enlightened dike warden is barely able to prevent the sacrifice of ‘something living’ during the construction of a dike (Storm 1967, 778).
See Bächtold-Stäubli 1927, col. 1662.