The Church of St. Valentine in Mais and the Puellachers (Continuation)

Appendix.

History and Art.

The Church of St. Valentine in Mais and the Puellachers. 2/4

(Continuation.)

At least as long as the holy confessors and bishops Valentine and Corbinian rested together in Mais, solemn and even nocturnal services were held at their graves. When Aribo, the third successor and biographer of Corbinian, presumably a native of Mais, hurried to one of these services while still a boy, he slipped over a steep cliff towards the Passer river rushing below. He owed his rescue to the intercession of the two saints.

Around the year 739, the Lombards departing from Mais took Valentine's earthly remains with them to Trento out of reverence.

When Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria, the last of the Agilolfing dynasty, returned from Italy in 769, he held a diet and ecclesiastical council in Bolzano. 1) In this council, the translation of St. Valentine's holy relics from Trento to Passau was decided and carried out shortly thereafter.

In the following year, Aribo convened a synod at his episcopal see in Freising, 2) and arranged for the translation of his predecessor's remains from Mais to Freising, which also took place.

Here the sources cited in the introduction run dry.

From the year 770 until 1452, no document has yet been found that preserves any record of the Church of St. Valentine.

In the latter year, on 7 November, Albertinus of the Order of Friars Minor, suffragan bishop and vicar general of the Bishop of Trento, Georg II Hack, consecrated an altar in this church in honor of this saint. Among the days for which indulgences are granted in the consecration deed 3), the first is the feast of its dedication, 4) namely on the day after Epiphany. 5)

Thirty years later, in this very church, through the efforts of parish priest Sigmund Heller and the church provost Ulrich Steger, a new choir (probably an elevated gallery) was built, among other improvements, and work was undertaken to establish a perpetual light and a weekly Mass. To accomplish this, the aforementioned sent a messenger around with an open circular begging letter. 6)

In 1618, Ehrenreich von Trautmannsdorf, lord of the nearby, now largely demolished Castle Neuberg, undertook a new building phase, and apparently at his own expense. 7) It plausibly received a masonry vault at that time instead of the wooden ceiling. The weakness of the side walls, which were designed not for the former but only for the latter, may have caused several cracks in the vault. For a long time, efforts had been made to prevent their spreading by installing wooden ties or crossbeams.

In 1824, the shifting of the main southern wall, the widening cracks, and a partial sagging of the vault suddenly became alarming. Due to the recognized danger of collapse, scaffolding had to be erected in the same autumn.

In the past year, the renovation of this church—venerable also on account of so many reminiscences of the distant past 8)—was accomplished according to the building plan approved by the high authority. It was completed in the past summer of 1826 by the brush of Mr. Leopold Puellacher.

II.

Whether the name Puellacher also deserves a place in a future national dictionary of artists may be decided by the following details:

Joseph Anton and Leopold Puellacher, father and son, were born in Telfs, the birthplace of the great masters Anton Zoller, Joseph Schöpf, Urban Klieber 9), and Franz Gaßler. 10)

Joseph Anton, the son of the peasant Joseph Puellacher and his wife Sabina Kirchmair, was born in 1728.

He received his first instruction in drawing and painting abroad, in Reichenhall, from an Italian master or at least one trained in an Italian school, who favored young Puellacher over all his other pupils.

After completing his apprenticeship, he sought and found work in Salzburg as an assistant to Mr. Streicher. At that very time, the Prince-Archbishop had to supply his contingent for the Imperial Army. Recruits were being levied. Puellacher, too, was supposed to enlist. He found no pleasure in this, and even less did he consider himself bound to do so as a foreigner, escaping with the help of good friends.

Having returned home, he settled in his native village. There he found opportunity for work and bread, especially at Stams Abbey, only two hours from Telfs, and at the Augustinian monastery then still existing in Seefeld. In Stams one can still see a series of guest rooms painted by him, and among other things the chapel along with several murals in the corridor of the infirmary. In this last-mentioned work, Schöpf, having just completed his apprenticeship in Innsbruck, served as his assistant and found his breakthrough there, presenting the first evidence of his great talent in the small ceiling painting and in the small oil altarpiece (depicting the dying St. Bernard). The prelate at the time, Abbot Vigilius Kranicher, wished to provide the promising young artist with the opportunity for advanced training. It soon presented itself.

1) Winter l. c. p. 138.

2) The same, pp. 130 — 135.

3) A copy of this has been preserved for us by the venerable Fr. Kassian Primisser in his Annal. Stams. Add. 129 ad Cap. XXIX.

4) Hence this church was indisputably already old in 1452, since a new altar was built in it and the feast of dedication was celebrated.

5) This was the day of death of St. Valentine, according to the testimony of the nearly contemporary Eugippius. Winter l. c. p. 159. Muchar l. c. p. 142. — The only side altar in this church bears the image and name of the saint in whose honor Valentine had originally consecrated it, the first holy protomartyr Stephen.

6) Annal. Stams. Add. 19 ad Cap. XXX. — A similar begging letter from parish priest Johann Gwin, the last from the secular clergy, and from the same church provost Ulrich Steger, issued on Christmas Day 1492, is preserved in the original in the Mais rectory.

7) Annal. Stams. Cap. XI., §. 11.

8) How many alterations the small church once built by St. Valentine may have suffered over more than 1300 years can easily be imagined. But that it stood on this site, or certainly not far from it, can hardly be doubted given so many interlocking testimonies.

9) Klieber died as an Imperial-Royal Court Sculptor in Innsbruck. He was esteemed by Schöpf not so much as a countryman and childhood friend as an artist.

10) Gaßler studied in Rome at the same time as Zauner and Schöpf, then settled as a sculptor in Linz, and finally moved from there to Vienna. He displayed his cultured artistic talent particularly in a small monument crafted for the Prelate of St. Florian, and even more so in the large monument for the late King of Poland.

(To be continued.)