Historical Notes on the Mountain Community of Hafling

Appendix.

Hafling, an inhabited mountain on the eastern side of Meran, belonging to the parish of Mais, appears in the surviving ancient records, among others in the foundation charter of the monastery in der Au near Botzen, now Gries, of 31 October 1166 under the name Haveninge. It presently numbers twenty-one scattered farmsteads separated by a deep valley, divided into seventy-seven house numbers, with approximately 470 inhabitants. According to the consecration charter drawn up on 14 September 1251, the Prince-Bishop of Trent Egno, a Count of Eppan, consecrated the local filial church of St. Catherine and set the consecration feast for the first Sunday after the Assumption of Mary. Long before that, the current curacy church of St. John the Baptist stood across the valley. Yet the local mountain dwellers did not yet have their own pastor. They had to descend for divine service to the parish church in Mais, from where they were pastorally served. On St. John's Eve 1413, the local community concluded an agreement with the parish priest of Mais, Jodok Edelmann, a native of Ulm, under the influence of the conventuals of Stams managing affairs in Mais. Through this, the parish priest bound himself and his successors to send an assistant priest on certain high feast days to administer pastoral duties there. Through a later agreement of the community with the Abbot of Stams, Pelagius Baur, as patron, and the conventual Simon Gaßler, as parish priest in Mais, the establishment of an independent curacy came to pass. "Done on the Friday before the feast of the twelve apostles Saint Simon and Jude after the birth of Christ our dear Lord 1526." The mutually contracted obligations were ratified in the same year, on 9 December, by "the Prince and Infant of Spain, Archduke of Austria etc., Count of Tyrol, Ferdinand (later Emperor) as reigning sovereign, also patron of the aforesaid house of God." The following year, Prince-Bishop Bernard of Cles confirmed them through a charter likewise in German: "Given at Trent. In our castle Buonconsiglio on the 10th day of April after the birth of Christ the 15th hundred and 27th year."