Within about a fifteen
minute car drive from my home in Bleiburg, there is a series of
hills, not to call them mountains, of which one bears the name:
„Hemmaberg“, the mountain of Hemma. It was named in memory of
Saint Hemma.
Who then, was Saint Hemma
?
She was borne in the year
980 AD, or about that time.
Nobody knows for sure.
In fact not too much is
known about her. Not even the exact spelling of her name:
some call her „Hemma“
some call her „Emma“., or „Imma“
No wonder; she lived about
1000 years ago, and in that time span, stories have a habit of
changing.
Let me tell you what I
could find out about her and then my assumption, which may or may not
be accurate.
Borne as the „Countess
of Zeltschach“ to obviously a noble family, called Peilenstein,
baptised as „Hemma“ ( or Emma, or maybe Imma ) and brought up in
Bamberg, a city now situated in Bavaria, by Empress Kunigunde.
She married Count Wilhelm
of Friesach and bore him two sons, Hartwig and Wilhelm.
Hemma (let's agree on this
version of her name) was a very pious lady and well connected with
the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.
She is said to have been a
most generous lady, donating much of her personal wealth to the
Catholic church.
Her wealth, however, was
peanuts, compared to that of her husband, Count Wilhelm of Friesach.
The official end-story of
this family goes like this:
One day, in a scuffle with
revolting mine workers, Hartwig and Wilhelm were killed.
Their father, Count
Wilhelm, overtaken by grief, made a pilgrimage to Rome.
On his journey back home
he too was killed.
Hemma, the only surviving
member of her family, inherited all of her husband's immense wealth
and, being the devout
Catholic, promptly started to spend it all in works for her religion.
She built 10 ( ten )
churches, paid for their erection and subsequent staffing, built the
Benedictine Abbey in Gurk and funded a Benedictine foundation in
Admont.
It is easy to see that
good old Hemma gave the bulk of her wealth, mostly from her
inheritance, to the Catholic church.
When she died in 1045 AD,
( or thereabouts) the Archbishop Gebhard of Salzburg dissolved the
Admont foundation and quickly used the money to set up the Diocese of
Gurk- Klagenfurt.
Hemma was „beatified“
in the year 1287 and declared a Saint in 1938.
(I always thought that, to
be declared a Saint, one had to have performed at least three
miracles. However, money seems to have easily taken the place of
miracles.)
So far the bones of this
story. How much of it is true nobody really knows.
This is what I think might
have happened:
Hemma was like putty in
the hands of the Catholic Church who knew that anything she owned
would finally end up in its hands.
So, how do we get all of
the family's wealth into Hemma's possession?
Simple: We kill the male
members and then there will be only Hemma, and to get the money out
of her will be child's play.
Oh, you say, religious
people, like Bishops, Archbishops, Popes would not do such a
dastardly thing ?
You have to be kidding!
They have probably done
this, as they have done many more deeds worse than this.
Of course, they have no
exclusive on murder for money. This seems to be an ear mark of
mankind.
Bertstravels
is glad not to be rich,
that's why he survived to a ripe old age
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