Mont Saint-Michel de Saint-Jean-Saverne et l'école des sorcières

Saint-Jean-Saverne

The rock rises like a prow above the village, and one climbs it from the west, the only passable side. The chapel of Saint-Michel occupies the platform: a nave, a five-sided chancel, a side chapel, some twenty metres in all, turned towards the north-east for lack of space. At its eastern end, a circular basin 4.70 m in diameter and 30 to 60 cm deep is cut into the sandstone: this is the Hexenschule, the witches' school. Tradition relates that they sat there in a ring, with the devil in the middle. Eleven metres lower, this cave, long a hermitage, keeps a sarcophagus that is probably Carolingian, and a fissure in the north wall, the witches' hole, is held to cure the fevers and migraines of whoever slips into it. The best-known legend is that of Itta, wife of Count Peter of Lutzelbourg: a witch, she is said to have unleashed a hailstorm on a scorching day to cool herself, and her husband to have had her buried alive in the cave before building the chapel for her soul. The history is more sober: Peter of Lutzelbourg gave the site to the abbey of Saint-Jean in 1126; a chaplain is mentioned before 1371; the chapel was rebuilt in 1593, when the confraternity and the pilgrimage of Saint Michael were born, then in 1684–1686. Archaeologists do not settle the question of the basin: the pool of a cult of Mithras, the cellar of a vanished building, or a protohistoric cutting linked to the neighbouring oppidum of the Heidenstadt.

Wikipédia — Mont Saint-Michel (Bas-Rhin) ↗

Getting there : From the church of Saint-Jean-Saverne (car park), a waymarked path of the Club Vosgien climbs to the rock in about twenty minutes; one can also park at the Lagenthal cross, on the forest road. The rock, the cave and the basin are freely accessible; the chapel opens only for services and feast days (to be checked). A waymarked loop of some ten kilometres (3 to 4 hours, easy) links the hill and the neighbouring rocks.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound